Infinite Sky
by Nalanzu
Summary: Uchiha Sasuke slips sideways into a world that could have been. Tags include Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence, and Explicit Language. (Crossposted from AO3, currently on hiatus.)


Sasuke knew before opening his eyes that something had gone terribly and horribly wrong. Partly this was because he was a highly trained ninja, with appropriately enhanced senses giving him all sorts of information, and those senses were telling him that the temperature was far too cold for late spring. Partly it was because if nothing had gone wrong, he wouldn't have had to open his eyes in the first place. Partly it was because he was pretty sure that he was lying naked on the frozen ground, surrounded by a crowd of murmuring civilians.

There was also the minor matter of his ears ringing, literally, a high-pitched buzz that was fading far too slowly for his peace of mind, and the pain settling along every inch of his skin now that he was awake enough to feel it. Sasuke dismissed the pain and the ringing with a thought, taking care not to let his chakra ripple, and tried to remember exactly when he'd passed out.

He had a very clear memory of Itachi, of reviving Orochimaru, and of starting through the forest with three of the most fucked up people he'd ever met. He'd taken a step forward, making sure the other three were in his field of vision, and then nothing. If he were to bet on whether it was Orochimaru or the duo of Suigetsu and Juugo who'd betrayed him, he was willing to put money on all three. He just wished he'd seen whatever it was they had done.

Since his memory was no help, Sasuke turned his attention to the crowd. Two people were moving purposefully towards him; he could feel their chakra, feel how tightly regulated it was, and knew from the pattern in both that that they were Leaf ninja. The two approaching him weren't the only ninja in the crowd, he suddenly felt, although most of the others felt oddly rigid. The impression Sasuke had was that they'd been trained, but not properly tested.

Sasuke wouldn't have thought the current war would leave anyone with that level of rawness, but stranger things had happened. More importantly, the static in his ears was clearing enough for him to be able to hear again, and a name caught his attention.

"-Uchiha," said an almost familiar voice.

"Since when do the Uchiha come out here?" said another, and it sounded almost like Ino.

"Well, look at him," said the first voice again, and the two ninjas he'd felt earlier knelt at his side.

"Check the eyes, then, if you're so sure," said maybe-Ino. "Here, I'll even do it." With no further warning, something reached for Sasuke's face.

He reacted before thinking, barely managing to keep his chakra leashed as he scrambled backwards and opened his eyes. Having intended specifically to not move, Sasuke was shaken enough by his lack of control that when the ninja cupped his face in both hands and peered intently at it, he just let her. It was, in fact, Ino kneeling next to him, although her forehead protector was missing. It took Sasuke until she let go to realize that she hadn't seemed to have recognized him at all.

"I told you," she said, pulling a light blanket out of the pouch at her hip and shaking it out. "Not an Uchiha. He's still got eyes."

Something was trying to claw its way out of his throat, and Sasuke savagely clamped down on whatever it was. "Dead, my ass," he said instead, and then he saw who Ino's partner was and his control gave way for the second time in the space of a single minute. The something that had dug into his throat climbed upwards and spilled over his lips, recognizable now as choked laughter. At least he'd managed to run into someone with a vested interest in his well-being; it was always easier to manipulate a situation if he could take advantage of pre-existing tendencies.

"For fuck's sake, Ino," said Sakura, and snatched the blanket away from her friend to wrap it very gently around his shoulders. "Are you okay?"

"That's a relative term," Sasuke managed, finally getting his breathing under control. The warmth of the blanket around his shoulders only emphasized how cold it was outside, and he started shivering. His chakra should have been enough to keep him warm, but it slipped away elusively when he reached for it.

"Can you stand?" Sakura asked.

"I'm fine," he said shortly, and pushed himself to his feet, except that without Sakura's steadying influence he would have toppled right back over. Vertigo pounded through his temples and for one sickening moment he had no idea which way was down. It cleared after a moment, though, and he found himself leaning heavily on his former teammate. "Fine," he repeated, and straightened. His limbs felt oddly heavy.

"Okay," Sakura said. Behind her, Ino was efficiently dispersing the crowd. Sasuke pulled the blanket more tightly around himself. It felt colder than it had a few moments ago, although the sun had come out from behind the puffy white clouds dotting the sky. "What's your name?"

Sasuke just stared at her; she was looking at him like she didn't know him either, and of all the people who would ask him what his _name_ was, Sakura was dead last on the list. Well, no, Naruto was dead last on the list, but Sakura was right in front of him. Sasuke realized his thoughts were wandering again when Sakura shone a bright light into each of his eyes in turn. He blinked and tried to turn away, but she was holding his head still.

"Well, your pupils are responding normally," she said. "Let's try this again. What's your name?"

"You can't be serious," Sasuke said.

"Do you know your address?" Sakura asked, although he could tell she didn't have much hope of a positive answer there. He just stared at her, affronted. What the hell kind of game did she think she was playing?

"No?" she said. "Okay. I'm going to take you to get checked out. Is there someone I can contact?"

"Oh, fuck off," Sasuke said. Her concerned citizen routine was getting at least a little ridiculous. "You can't stop me this time either," he added, just a little vindictively.

"Ino, I might need a little help," Sakura said calmly, not reacting to his statement at all.

Sasuke gave her no warning before he slipped her grasp, dropped the blanket, and started running. The vertigo he'd felt earlier hit him again, although less severely, and he barely managed not to run into a wall. He vaulted upwards instead, landing on a roof, and really saw his surroundings for the first time.

The Village of the Hidden Leaf spread out below him, peaceful and intact. There were some differences, some things that had changed in the years he'd been gone, but it was unmistakable. It was also impossible; Pain had completely destroyed the village. The only recognizable part of it left should have been the cliff, carved with the faces of each Leaf Hokage. And yet, here it was.

Either he'd landed in some kind of illusion – and wouldn't it be just like Itachi to pull a dick move like this, trapping Sasuke so that he couldn't get the answers he had set out to find – or… his internal voice trailed off. Any alternative there might be didn't really bear thinking about.

"Stop right there!" Ino shouted from below him, and Sasuke smirked. Itachi should have known that an illusion wouldn't hold him; he formed the basic seals to dispel it.

"Release!" Sasuke shouted as his hands came together for the final seal. Nothing happened. All that meant was that Itachi had crafted something a little trickier. Sasuke ran through another set of seals, which had precisely the same effect as the first set, and the interactive thread of the illusion with Ino's face was almost within reach.

Time – Sasuke needed time to examine the illusion and figure out how to break it. He was almost sure that it was some form of Tsukuyomi – incredibly detailed, hyper-real in every sense of the word, and utterly brilliant, to be fair, but still derived from the Sharingan – which meant that he would be able to shatter it. He just needed a brief moment to analyze it.

There was an empty alleyway just a few feet away. Still moving far more slowly than he would have liked, Sasuke dropped into it. Sakura was behind him before he could blink, though, and the vertigo from spinning around to face her drove him to one knee.

What Sasuke now recognized as impending chakra exhaustion drove him to act. "I've had enough of this, Itachi," he growled, loudly enough that Sakura stopped in her tracks. "It ends now!"

He couldn't see his eyes sinking into red, couldn't see his own Mangekyo Sharingan whirling around his pupils, but he could feel it. He could feel Itachi's eyes in his skull, burning with energy as he searched for the flaw that he knew was there.

No illusion was completely perfect.

"Fuck, he _is_ an Uchiha!" he heard Ino say, distantly, as his chakra began to gutter out. He knew he didn't have enough chakra to force the illusion to shatter, but he had to try anyway. He ignored Ino, and poured the last of his strength into breaking free of his surroundings.

Sasuke would never remember the next few seconds clearly; what he later knew to be the village wards crashed down on him like a ton of bricks, driving him to his knees and throwing his eyes abruptly back to normal. At the time, all he knew was that he was on the ground and killing intent permeated the air. He gathered his chakra again, because fighting Itachi was the only way out of this mess.

A hand grasped his shoulder, and he _didn't see it coming_. "Stay down," said a familiar voice, and Sasuke looked up to see Kakashi standing over him. His forehead protector was shoved up, both eyes open, and murderous fury streamed out of every pore. "Stay down if you want to live," Kakashi said again, and directed the Mangekyo Sharingan outwards.

"What the fuck," Sasuke said, and forced the Sharingan back into his eyes. The wards – he could see them now, a series of shields linked to intricate webs of chakra, far more extensive than anything he'd ever seen, all tied to threads leading out of the Leaf – drove a blunt hammer of pure force into Kakashi. The Copy Ninja just smirked and stood up again, sending his chakra out at the wards themselves. A second blow, and a third, and then Sakura was dragging him away and hissing in his ear.

"Hide your eyes! Now!"

He turned to look at her, staring imperiously at the warped reflection of a little brat he had known so long ago. She slapped him, or she tried. He caught her hand before it had moved more than a few inches.

"This is not the way," she said cryptically. "Now hide your fucking eyes before you get us all killed."

Behind her, Kakashi was dazedly getting to his feet after yet another blow from the wards. The amount of power they were drawing was absurd, but Sasuke could see exactly where it came from; it wasn't the wards, precisely. They were a conduit, and the actual chakra source was swiftly approaching.

"Itachi," Sasuke growled again. It didn't quite feel like his brother, but it was the only explanation.

"The Uchiha heir has been dead for nearly ten years," Sakura snapped. "Now come on!"

"No, he hasn't," Sasuke snapped back, exhaustion driving him into the dynamic he'd had with Sakura when they were both twelve. "You know goddamn well –" He didn't get to finish his sentence due to Ino rudely throwing icy mud in his face out of nowhere.

"Fuck, we should just let Tobi have him," Ino said, and Sasuke stilled. So it was Tobi's illusion that had him ensnared? The last he'd heard of Tobi was the center of a war zone; what was he doing casting complicated illusions? The answer to that was obvious; Tobi was neutralizing a serious threat. Hard upon the heels of this revelation came the owner of the chakra racing toward them, and Sasuke clawed the mud out of his eyes just in time to see yet another familiar face.

"Kakashi," said one of the bodies of Pain.

"Yo," Kakashi said, smiling.

"Move. Now." Sakura was dragging him away, entangled in the blanket again, and with the last of his chakra fading, he didn't have the energy to stop her. If he didn't escape this illusion soon –

"This is not an illusion," she said. "Are you fucked in the head? If you're whatever the Uchihas are planning this time, you're a piss poor excuse for a secret weapon."

"Screw you," Sasuke said. Little white flashes kept sparking through his vision, and if it weren't for Sakura's grip on his arm, he was pretty sure he would have actually fallen over. The blanket kept tangling in his legs and tripping him up, but he was so cold that he couldn't let go of it. "What do you mean, secret weapon?"

"Oh god, don't tell me they kept you locked up in the basement or something," Sakura said, and pulled him through a door he vaguely recognized too late as ANBU headquarters.

The next few hours were a total blur; something was draining – or had drained – his chakra, and Sasuke could barely speak, let alone move. He had the hazy impression that there were people arguing over him and about him, and that he was being questioned, but he had no idea what anyone was actually saying.

At one point, he saw Itachi and tried to strangle the undead bastard. After that, someone put chakra-bright hands on his chest and Sasuke lost the last of his remaining sense of reality. When it returned, he found himself lying on a cot, wearing what felt like loose clothing, and deliciously warm despite the cool air on his face. The ceiling over his head was the peculiar shade of grayish-white that was reserved for individuals who couldn't be confined in a standard jail cell.

A single window let sunlight stream into the room, illuminating dust motes drifting lazily from side to side. Sasuke blinked, thoughts slowly ordering. He felt off; his chakra wasn't responding properly and gravity was dragging at every inch of his skin.

A brief meditation exercise cleared Sasuke's mind enough that he could start to recognize how he'd been bound; the threads of a few separate techniques were binding his strength and his speed, as well as his ability to actually move. It at least accounted for the lassitude permeating his body. His eyes were restrained as well, with a technique he recognized as coming _right out of the Uchiha clan secret records_. Those were hidden; he only knew about them because Itachi had shown him once, making him promise not to tell anyone, ever.

_No, wait_, he thought. _If this is Itachi's illusion, of course he knows about the records._And like any ninja skilled in the generation of illusions, Itachi – and presumably Tobi – used the victims' own memories and expectations to enhance the experience. The one thing Sasuke was sure of was that this illusion wasn't Izanami; he wasn't looping previous experiences. No, this little sequence of events was entirely new. It felt real in the way Itachi's Tsukuyomi hadn't before, real down to the physical sensations and reactions and consequences.

"You know, Itachi," Sasuke said conversationally, thereby verifying that he could still speak, "your illusions got much better after you died."

Sasuke wasn't sure if this illusion was supposed to be distraction or torture, but he was firmly of the opinion that there were few things that could happen to make things markedly worse.

What actually happened was not on Sasuke's list of things. The door opened and Uzumaki Naruto walked in, wearing a variation on his obnoxious bright orange pants and jacket. He was also carrying something, but Sasuke ignored it in his very determined efforts to knock Naruto through the wall. Rage filmed his vision with red and somewhere in the back of his mind he felt the technique holding him down evaporate under its force.

"You! You bastard! This is all your goddamn fault! You did this!" He was shouting at Itachi, at Naruto, at Tobi, at Danzo; it didn't matter. The only one really there was Itachi, holding the other end of the illusion. Or maybe Tobi, but Sasuke had been chasing his brother for so long that cursing him felt as natural as breathing.

Given Itachi's familiarity with Naruto, Sasuke was expecting the next turn of illusory events to be the demon fox. He was expecting a blast of chakra, an army of shadow clones, the brute force Naruto invariably threw at whatever stood in his way. He was not expecting very specific strikes at several nerve clusters with a pair of ultra-fine needles, and really, he should be better at adapting to the situation than this, even if the situation wasn't entirely real.

Sasuke hit the ground, partly out of shock, partly because the majority of his body was now _completely numb._

"So," Naruto said pleasantly, lifting him effortlessly and putting him back on the cot against the wall. "My name is Namikaze Naruto, and I'm your medic."

Sasuke couldn't help laughing at the thought of Naruto as a healer, and forgot for a moment that this Naruto wasn't real. "Cut the crap, asshole. We both know your incompetent ass is only here to spy on that that isn't really your name."

Naruto looked at him sadly for a moment. "What's your name?" he asked, moving his hands through a set of seals that – if Sasuke wasn't mistaken – would help him ascertain any damage Sasuke was currently suffering.

"You know my name!" Sasuke growled. "Stop fucking around, Itachi, I'm not going to stay in here."Doubt flickered to life even as he spoke; he could feel Naruto's chakra and there was absolutely no trace of the fox. Naruto still had immense chakra reserves, but they were untainted by the Tailed Beast. There was absolutely no reason for Itachi to include a detail both that insignificant and that wildly out of place. _What if this isn't some kind of illusion? What if he sent you to a real place?_whispered a voice in the back of his head. It sounded remarkably like Orochimaru.

The look of sadness deepened, and Naruto put his hands on Sasuke's chest. Sasuke felt a tingle of foreign chakra, gentle and thorough and very precise, seeking out and repairing the physical damage he was suffering.

"Holy shit, you're actually a healer," he said out loud. "Uzumaki Naruto. You're actually a medic." There was another ridiculous deviation from reality; why would Itachi, or Tobi, create this version of Naruto? _If you were actually in an illusion, you would have broken it already_, said the Orochimaru voice, and Sasuke shoved it away.

Naruto looked confused for a moment. "That's not my name," he said. "Why didn't you believe me when I said I was a healer?" he added.

"Because – because I know you. We trained together. We were on Team 7 together. Your chakra control is crap, I saw how long it took you when Kakashi-sensei tried to teach us to walk up trees." Some of the feeling was returning to his fingers; if he kept talking long enough, he was sure he would regain enough strength to overpower Naruto and escape. He needed somewhere to think, to analyze his surroundings.

"Is that Hatake Kakashi you're talking about?" Naruto asked, frowning. Sasuke suddenly realized what looked off about Naruto's face; the six whisker-like scar lines that he normally had were missing. This Naruto's face was completely smooth. It seemed like an odd detail for Itachi to leave out.

"He was our jounin instructor," Sasuke said, trying to sound frustrated. "When we were genin. Right out of the Academy." He laughed again, a sudden short bark. "I guess I never did take the chuunin exam again, actually." He was the only technical genin to have advanced so far in the bingo books, too, but this Naruto didn't need to hear that. Sasuke was trying to convince him he was harmless – crazy, maybe, but harmless – until he could make a move.

"Hatake Kakashi doesn't instruct students any more," Naruto said carefully, and increased the amount of chakra streaming into Sasuke.

"Why not?" Sasuke asked. He could feel his toes now, too, and best of all, he could tell that Naruto was _not _replacing the techniques keeping him immobilized and his eyes suppressed.

"Um." Naruto, apparently finished, sat back on his heels and scrubbed one hand through his spiky hair. "What's your name again?" he asked after a pause.

_That's a terribly clumsy evasion, Naruto._ Sasuke pretended to ignore the lousy interrogation technique, and besides, it wasn't like he was staying here. One way or another he would get out of this stupid ANBU cell, and then he would figure out where he was and what was going on. "Uchiha Sasuke," he said, watching Naruto very closely through his eyelashes.

"You have the same name as the former clan heir's younger brother," Naruto said, after yet another pause.

"I _am_former the clan heir's younger brother, moron," Sasuke shot back caustically. "Actually, I'm technically the clan head at this point, since I'm the only one _left._"

"The only one left?" Naruto sounded honestly and completely confused. He could not possibly be this dense; Itachi had an undeservedly high opinion of the blond bastard. That, more than anything else, was slowly convincing Sasuke that this bizarre place wasn't an Itachi-directed dream. _Another dimension? _suggested the little voice. That was possible, right? That was the essence of how the Kamui worked. "What do you mean, the only one left? The only what left?" Naruto continued, as if Sasuke weren't having an existential crisis right in front of him.

"Itachi killed my clan," Sasuke ground out, operating on pure reflex and answering as if this were the real Naruto actually asking a question he already knew the answer to. "He murdered them all, with help from that raging douche Madara masquerading as some anonymous asshole in a one-eyed mask."

"Tobi?" Naruto said quickly, hands very very still.

"Yes, Tobi," Sasuke snapped. "Do you know any _other_ Uchihas prancing around hiding their faces?"

Naruto's hands started moving again, wrapping up his equipment. If Sasuke hadn't been looking, he wouldn't have seen the very fine tremors that went through them for less than a second. "I see," he said, voice perfectly even.

"And then my bastard brother had the temerity to contract some sort of wasting disease and die before I had the chance to kill him with my own hands," Sasuke continued, letting some of his real anger show. "I spent four years tracking him down, just to see him drop dead at my feet and tell me that he killed our family _for the good of Leaf._"

"And this happened when?" Naruto asked, still preternaturally calm.

"Last year. You know damn good and well it was last year," Sasuke said.

"Uchiha Itachi died almost ten years ago," said Naruto, and stood. "So did Uchiha Sasuke. They were executed for the Uchiha clan's crime of conspiracy against the Village of Hidden Mist."

"You're doing a terrible job of convincing me you're real," Sasuke said, after the shock of the quiet statement had faded. Everything about it was wrong. Conspiracy against the _Mist_? The very idea was laughably absurd. "If the Leaf had wanted Itachi executed –"

"It wasn't the Leaf," Naruto interrupted. "It was Uchiha Obito. Tobi," Naruto added at Sasuke's blank look.

It was too much. Itachi had gone way off script with his make-believe world, telling Sasuke that he'd been executed at the age of eight by some Uchiha he'd never heard of masquerading as one of the most powerful ninja with a grudge the world had ever seen. Except that the name Uchiha Obito sounded familiar, and Sasuke was sure he'd seen it before. He could almost see it in his mind's eye now.

Sasuke's internal vision cleared, leaving him with the sharp-edged mental picture of Kakashi in front of the memorial stone. The name Uchiha Obito was engraved in it. Sasuke had wondered once, very briefly, if this was the source of Kakashi's Sharingan eye, but he hadn't asked. It hadn't been relevant.

"You went too far, Itachi," Sasuke said. "No way am I going to believe this is real now."

"I don't know where you think you are," Naruto said, "but I promise, it's real." Sasuke could feel the sincerity pouring off of him, and if he hadn't had early doses of conditioning to desensitize him to so much pure Naruto-ness, he might have succumbed.

"It's not real. This is an illusion, concocted by my undead bastard brother to stop me from avenging his death," Sasuke said.

Naruto just looked at him, the sadness back in his face, before turning and walking out the door. Sasuke heard a soft whisper that sounded like "I wish I knew how to reach you," but he didn't care. He didn't. None of this was real.

Two more days into the illusion saw Sasuke continuing to run the cycle of doubt and certainty, but as the hours wore on it became more and more difficult to convince himself that what he saw wasn't real. Surely even undead and nearly immortal Itachi didn't have the chakra necessary to maintain an illusion so complex for so long, Sasuke would think, staring into the face of an ANBU interrogator and telling her she wasn't real. And yet, what other rational explanation could there be, he would ask himself, and tell another interrogator that he was from another world.

Eventually the questions about where he'd come from stopped, and the questions about his eyes began. Name your parents, the interrogator asked over and over, and Sasuke replied with the truth. Where did you get your eyes, they asked again and again, and he still replied with the truth.

Torture wasn't one of the methods that was tried on Sasuke, or at least not the direct type. He knew just enough about interrogation technique to recognize that it had been leveled against him, but there was no reason to defend against it and no reason to lie. The frustration flickering around everyone else was laughable, but they weren't real or weren't his and it didn't matter either way.

Eventually the questions stopped altogether, and Sasuke was left in silence. He slept for the first time since waking in the cell, restlessly, his chakra still tangled up and around itself and refusing to behave properly. He hadn't had so much trouble controlling it since early childhood, and he couldn't decide whether that meant that Itachi had twisted it as part of the illusion or that the very randomness of its twisting indicated reality.

The door scraping open pulled him out of a vague nightmare, and Sasuke climbed to his feet to face the next round. For the second time, Uzumaki Naruto made an unexpected appearance; Sasuke hadn't seen him – or any other healer – since Naruto had left the first time. Now, he was standing warily near the door, a pile of dark cloth balled up into one hand.

"Okay, here." Naruto's face showed uncertainty, but his body language was relaxed and ready.

Sasuke eyed the proffered bundle from across the room, and then walked over to take it from Naruto's outstretched hand. "What is this?" he asked, but he hadn't gotten a firm grasp on the bundle and cloth slipped over his hands in the shape of clothing.

"Well, you can't go outside dressed like that." Despite having absolutely no room to talk, what with his tight orange pants and green mesh shirt, Naruto wrinkled his nose.

"Ah," Sasuke said, glancing down at himself. He was still wearing the same loose pants and shirt he'd been given two days before, the gray seeming somehow even drearier with constant exposure. The gift from Naruto was at least a respectable black. "Thank you."

Naruto looked at him for a moment longer, as if waiting for something, and then shrugged and turned his back.

"What?" Sasuke asked, in the process of collecting the items that had fallen to the floor. He'd expected Naruto to leave, but no. The other boy was just standing there, clearly waiting for Sasuke to get on with it and get dressed.

"I've been assigned as your temporary guide," Naruto said, hands in his pockets.

"You're fucking kidding me." It wasn't that he hadn't expected some kind of babysitter, if and when the (maybe illusory) Leaf decided to let him go. It wasn't that he hadn't expected that he wouldn't be watched, and observed, and generally poked and prodded until his fantastic story of another world was either accepted or they decided he was functionally insane. The direct poking and prodding had just taken far less time than he'd expected. "I thought I'd be in here for weeks."

There was also the matter of the identity of his companion; Naruto as his de facto handler was just the universe (Itachi) playing yet another cosmic joke on him, Sasuke was sure of it. Manfully keeping his mouth shut past that one initial slip, he stripped and headed into the tiny shower thoughtfully placed in the corner of the room before dressing.

Either whoever had sent the clothing had a sense of humor, or Itachi had an exceptionally good memory and wasn't above acting like an asshole; while the pants and sandals were standard-issue blacks, the shirt was a piece of merchandise he hadn't seen since his early childhood. It was the same cut and cloth as chuunin or jounin standard-issue blacks, except that an embroidered Uchiha fan sat proudly on each shoulder instead of the Whirlpool's spiral. Sasuke vaguely remembered seeing several such shirts in a heap, while someone ranted in the background about mockery and mimicry and imitation. (He also thought he remembered the shirts being burned, but that might have been another occasion altogether. Memories of his childhood were all somewhat blurred together. Except for Itachi.)

In Itachi's illusion, the clothes were just another dig to get under his skin. Sasuke wasn't sure he remembered Itachi seeing the shirts, though, which wasn't really conclusive either way. On the other hand, if he wasn't dreaming, the clothes would ensure no one took him seriously. Sasuke wasn't sure if that was to protect him or limit him; in the end, it was probably both.

Either way, he got no vest, no weapons pouches, and very basic shoes, and he was leaning towards the horrifying thought that all of his experiences had been completely real. The idea of accepting the lack of illusion was terrifying, though, and he looked at Naruto for distraction. Naruto was often a brilliant distraction, though usually affecting the wrong person.

"Can I go now?" Sasuke asked, finger-combing his damp hair back from his face. The blacks felt odd against his skin; he'd never worn them, and they were weirdly constrictive around the chest but insubstantial against his hips.

Naruto glanced over his shoulder, and then looked again, eyes going from Sasuke's head to his feet and back up again in appreciation. "You look fantastic," he said gleefully.

"Stop hitting on me," Sasuke said automatically.

"What? No! I had a bet with Sakura. I'm so going to win when she sees you." Naruto rubbed his hands together, still radiating glee.

"Oh, shut up," Sasuke said, but it lacked force. "Are we going or what?"

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto knocked on the door, and it opened from the outside. A whispered conference and a quick hand sign, several yards of corridors, and finally the blue sky spread over his head. Sasuke stopped in the middle of the street for a moment just to feel the sunlight on his skin and the bustling energy of the village all around him. Force of habit had him cataloguing people he knew before he thought about it - Naruto is _here_, Sakura is _there_, Kakashi-sensei is _not right_ – and the whole process shuddered to a stop.

"What?" Naruto asked. "Are you just going to stand there? We have places to be."

"I – look, if I want to just stand here, I will," Sasuke said sharply. Keeping track of his teammates and peers had been a habit, until Orochimaru, and it brought up memories he didn't want. "I don't take instructions from you, dead-last."

"Whatever," Naruto said agreeably, not reacting to the nickname at all. "But we're still going."

"Whatever," Sasuke said, and then realized that his automatic teammate-tracking had given him less than ideal results. He glanced over at Naruto, who was looking in another direction entirely with a bored expression, and decided that asking would be counterproductive. Besides, it had been made abundantly clear during the interrogation that his stunt with the wards had been a deeply stupid move, if he wanted to avoid Tobi's attention. Apparently no one wanted Tobi's attention, except Kakashi, who'd leapt in to cover for him; really, going to see what had happened was only polite.

And if none of this was real, temporarily going along with it would throw Itachi for a loop. Decision made, Sasuke flipped a small rock into the air with his toes. His chakra control was still unreliable enough that he didn't want to risk something like a clone to distract Naruto, but the rock would do just as well if he used it correctly.

Sasuke's assessment of correct use was to whip the rock past Naruto's head so that it clattered against a wall several feet away. Naruto tracked it automatically, but Sasuke had started moving as soon as the rock had left his fingers and was already on the nearest rooftop.

"Dammit, Sasuke!" Naruto shouted, and started chasing him.

There was a trick to running that involved restraining the feeling of deadly intent and exuding a sense of joy; Sasuke had learned it from Suigetsu, of all people, who liked to use it to rush through a town and then decapitate someone at the end of the run. Civilians and ninjas alike were less likely to harass someone who looked like they were running for the sheer delight of it. Sasuke hadn't actually tried it, but he had to admit that it worked well for Suigetsu.

Now, it meant that the Leaf citizens just stepped aside if they saw him coming; an unfamiliar face, gone too quickly to recognize anyway, being chased by the Leaf's Number One Unpredictable Ninja. _Must be a prank gone wrong_, he could practically read in the air, and then it was over. He was at the base of the cliffs overlooking the village, but Kakashi was nowhere to be seen until Sasuke looked up.

Sasuke's confidence that he was in an illusion dipped just a little farther; Itachi had been harsh, but he'd never actually been cruel. _Yes, he was, he was cruel to you, unbearably so,_ said the Orochimaru voice in his head, and Sasuke ruthlessly suppressed it. Itachi had not been cruel, and any pain he'd inflicted had always been direct. Making his victims watch someone else suffer had never been his style.

The sight that met Sasuke's eyes was nothing like Itachi, nothing like anything his older brother would dream up for punishment. Kakashi was splayed out against the rocks, nailed – literally nailed – to the cliff face with ultra-fine needles threaded through his arms and legs. A sticky web of chakra Sasuke could see by just invoking the slightest edge of Sharingan held him suspended thirty feet off the ground. From the look of it, he had been there for hours if not days; the blood staining the needles and the rock below was a dried rusty brown and clearly worn. If it hadn't been for the thready pulse of chakra that Sasuke could still feel, he would have said that his former teacher was already dead. As it was, he didn't think Kakashi would survive much longer.

"This is wrong," Sasuke said. As he started to go fix it, something rustled from behind him. Naruto emerged from the nearest alley and made a very clearly telegraphed tackle. Sasuke sidestepped it, grabbed Naruto's collar, and pointed upwards. "What the fuck is that?"

Naruto wilted, turning his face away and looking at the ground. "Leave it alone," he said. "You can't help him."

"No, seriously, what the fuck, Naruto," Sasuke said, wrapping his other fist in Naruto's jacket and giving him a little shake. There was no call for this sort of deliberate, calculated, cold cruelty. Sasuke wanted to think that such callousness wasn't real, couldn't be possible, but of course the Leaf had ordered the death of his entire clan. What was the torture and death of one single person in the face of that particular transgression? But it was still no less wrong, and real or not, Sasuke would not just stand by and watch.

"If he survives the three days, we can take him down," Naruto said, voice very small.

"That's bullshit," Sasuke said. The very first lesson he and Naruto – and Sakura – had ever learned from Kakashi was to take care of your teammates. _Ninjas who don't adhere to regulations are scum_, he'd said, _but those who abandon their teammates are worse scum._ "That's bullshit and you know it." He dropped Naruto and made a leap for the rock face.

_An entire town of Leaf ninjas and you're the one trying to stage a rescue? _said the little voice inside his head. It sounded more like Orochimaru now, and was almost as loud as his own thoughts. _That's how you know you're well and truly fucked, Sasuke._ He ignored it again and concentrated chakra in his feet and hands.

Naruto pulled him down before he'd gotten more than a foot off the ground. "Do you want to make this worse for everyone?" he hissed. "He's up there because of you!"

"No shit," Sasuke snapped back. "I can't believe you're just leaving him there. You , of all people. This place is sick." Really, what bothered him was less that the entire village had apparently decided Kakashi was an appropriate scapegoat for Sasuke's apparent transgression, and more that Naruto was trying to convince him that abandoning someone to days of torturous pain was the best course of action. It was so unlike the Naruto he knew that it was almost a physical shock, and again the thought came that Itachi would not have written such profound changes into the representations of the people they both knew.

"He knew what he was getting himself into," Naruto shot back, and scrubbed his hands over his face. "I can't believe I'm trying to justify this to you."

A tiny knot inside Sasuke's gut loosened just a little; maybe Naruto wasn't so different after all. "So stop justifying and help."

"I can't." Naruto crossed his arms. "You can't. Look, I don't know what it's like where you're from and – I can't – sometimes we have to endure in order to protect the future, okay. It's not like anyone is totally okay with what Tobi is or what he's doing, and – there's a reason this is happening. It's going to be worth it." He looked down miserably again. "It has to be worth it."

"What the fuck does Tobi have to do with anything," Sasuke said, eying the distance between Naruto and the cliff wall. He didn't really care what Tobi had to do with anything, but if Naruto was talking he wasn't paying quite as much attention to Sasuke's chakra.

"What do you – it has everything to do with everything!" Naruto looked up, frustrated and angry and actually seeming tired. "All of this is because of Tobi and the Nine Tails."

_Tobi has the Nine Tails sealed into himself?_ Sasuke couldn't think of a worse Sacrifice for the tailed beast, and it wasn't until Naruto answered his thought that he realized he'd said it out loud.

"He _controls_ it," Naruto said. "Fuck, why else would we send our ninjas to the Mist draft? Why else would we be the only other ninja village left? Why else does Tobi do whatever he wants and we just have to live with it?"

"He controls it," Sasuke repeated. Was Naruto saying what Sasuke thought he was? That Tobi had essentially conquered the known world and turned into some sort of bizarre dictatorship? His certainty of Itachi's illusion slipped just a little more – surely Itachi wouldn't have chosen Tobi as his straw dictator – and then cracked against the idea that the Leaf had actually _surrendered_. Surely the Leaf had more pride. "Well, so what?" he said, finally. "It's only a tailed beast."

"If you were facing down the Nine-Tails, you'd be cautious too," Naruto said, and Sasuke laughed. Cautious was not the right word to describe the people who would allow the type of wards webbing the village; that was outright capitulation.

"Please. The Nine Tails is not as big of a problem as you cowards seem to think it is." Madara-behind-Tobi's-mask was much more dangerous than the Nine Tails, even if he called himself Obito for some unfathomable reason, and Sasuke was fairly sure that he could figure out a way to handle even the legendary Madara. Sasuke returned his attention upwards.

Naruto looked at him suspiciously. "We're going to have a very long talk at some point very soon, but right now I need you to leave Kakashi here and come with me."

Sasuke glanced upwards one more time. Kakashi's chakra was low, but not as unsteady as he'd first thought. He still didn't think Kakashi would survive the next fourteen hours to reach the total of seventy-two, and he refused to let Madara bully him when he wasn't even there. "Yeah, I don't think so," he said.

"He'll tell you the same thing I did, if he lives," Naruto said. "It's worth the price."

"Fuck your price." Sasuke leapt upwards, sticking to the wall with ease. He had his hand on the first needle, ready to pull it out, when Kakashi lifted his head and spoke.

"Don't."

Sasuke froze, fingers still gripping the needle, and then carefully let go. "You can't mean that."

The single word seemed to have exhausted whatever reserves Kakashi had. He seemed to sink back against the rock, almost collapsing into himself, and his chakra dipped ever so slightly lower.

"There had better be a damn good reason for all of this," Sasuke said, not sure if he meant his former teacher specifically or the entire village in general. "Fuck," he said again, and dropped back off the wall. "The second those 72 hours are up, I'm coming back," he said to Naruto.

"Good," Naruto told him with the barest flicker of his usual enthusiasm. "This way."

The Uchiha clan compound was not where Sasuke had expected to be led, although in retrospect it made perfect sense. Far from being empty and silent, it was full of people. It was full of his family, faces only barely remembered from his childhood. There was one significant difference, though, aside from everyone looking a decade older; the vast majority of the Uchiha had clearly had their eyes removed.

"What the fuck is this?" Sasuke demanded, grabbing Naruto's arm. Despite the general amazement at his apparently still having both eyes in his skull, he had not for a second thought that the Uchiha clan would be systematically blinded and still alive. It was jarring enough that he forgot for a moment that he was trying to prove it wasn't real, and reacted as though it were. "Who fucking did this?"

"Come on," Naruto said, simply continuing to walk forwards. Sasuke was forced to either let go or start an incredibly undignified scuffle. He chose to let go and follow.

"That's not an answer," Sasuke said. "Who _did_ this?"

"You don't know?"

"Why would I know?" Sasuke said, gritting his teeth. "I told you, I don't belong here."

"Yeah, but I didn't think you actually believed that," Naruto said, stopping quickly enough that Sasuke stumbled into him. Naruto grabbed his shoulders and peered into his face. "You do believe it," he said wonderingly, from way too close. Sasuke leaned backwards, trying to get Naruto out of his personal space, but Naruto just followed. "Holy shit, you actually believe that you're from somewhere else," Naruto said again, fingers tightening convulsively against Sasuke's flesh.

"Get _off me_!" Sasuke finally unfroze his feet and lunged sideways to break Naruto's hold. A familiar look of pity was on Naruto's face, the look he hadn't seen since waking up in this illusion or other world or whatever it was, the look that the real Naruto had worn every time he'd tried to convince Sasuke to just come home again. Sasuke hated it, hated the thought that the Leaf's Sacrifice pitied _him_. "Don't look at me like that," he said, and would have said more, except that Naruto stepped forward and wrapped him in a warm hug.

Sasuke's brain short-circuited for a very brief second before reflex took over and he shoved Naruto away. Naruto blinked twice, and then rubbed the back of his head with an embarrassed grin. "Didn't know what to say," he offered, and Sasuke tried very hard not to hammer him into the ground. "This way," Naruto said for at least the hundredth time in the past five minutes.

Naruto eventually led him to the house where he'd grown up, which held his father's office, and then into the office itself. The man behind the desk wasn't Uchiha Fugaku, though, and Sasuke felt a very small twinge of relief. He wasn't sure he could have faced his father; the house and the people they passed made him feel all of eight years old again, an inadequate failure who couldn't measure up to his talented older brother.

"So the village has finally come to its senses and turned the impostor over to us," said the man behind the desk. Like most of the other Uchiha clan members, he was missing both eyes. A thin cloth blindfold had been tied across his face, but Sasuke could see the shape of his eye sockets underneath it; they were empty. He remembered the face, though, despite the burn scar that hadn't been there before disfiguring half of it. Sasuke remembered the accusations this man had hurled at Itachi so many years before. Anger swept over him, and for a very brief moment it was all he could do not to lunge across the desk and strangle the arrogant bastard.

"Sasuke?" Naruto was saying, one hand on his shoulder.

Sasuke blinked, the red haze of rage fading from his vision, and realized that Naruto's relaxed stance was thoroughly deceptive. The other boy was ready to counter whatever Sasuke did. "What," he said roughly, deliberately uncurling his fingers. Naruto pulled his hand away, but he didn't change his posture.

"I said, this is Uchiha Yashiro," Naruto said.

"I know who he is," Sasuke growled. "You were one of the ones who accused my brother of murdering Shisui, as if Itachi would ever do anything to hurt his best friend."

Yashiro blinked, very slowly, and any trace of expression leached out of his face. "I see," he said to Naruto. "We'll handle him from here. The Uchiha clan takes care of its own."

"The Uchiha clan is a lie," Sasuke said. "All of you are dead. Dead!" He wasn't going to play along with Itachi's little game any further; showing him his family alive and crippled was twisted in all the wrong ways. "My brother was forced to kill all of you because of your stupid revolution, and then the Leaf demonized him for it! I'm done with this, Itachi! Done!"

His chakra had been replenished, he had the strength, and there was nothing to stop him from breaking the false reality. Eyes whirling red, Sasuke directed his chakra outwards, expecting to feel resistance before the illusion shattered. Nothing happened. No resistance, no stretching, no threads of an illusion at all. Sasuke couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that there was nothing for his chakra to pull apart, and pushed harder to find the layer of dreams and nightmares. He was dimly aware that he was screaming, and then Naruto slapped him across the face.

Sasuke's chakra drained away, his eyes slipping back to normal. That single act had taken most of the reserves he'd built up, and he swayed slightly, panting, his heart racing. "That's not possible," he said. "It isn't, this isn't real, this can't be real, it has to be illusion, a trick, I don't belong here-"

Naruto grabbed him by the shoulders and shook slightly. "Hey. Hey!" Sasuke snapped his mouth shut, ashamed of his lapse in control, and carefully stood up straight. "It's okay," Naruto said, gently, and Sasuke looked away from the pitying expression he was sure would return.

"No, it damn well isn't," said Yashiro. "You're damn lucky he pulled that idiotic stunt in here, where the wards on the house masked it, than outside. Tobi would have been on him within seconds if he'd tried that under the open sky."

"Yeah, uh, about that," Naruto said, turning back towards Yashiro. He left one hand on Sasuke's back, though, and Sasuke let it stay. "He kind of already did."

There was a brief pause, and then Yashiro said drily, "I assume that since we're not all dead already, that the matter has been handled."

"Uh," Naruto said, managing somehow to pack enough meaning into the syllable to fill entire paragraphs; even Sasuke could tell that he didn't want to talk about it, that he was upset, and that 'handled' was exactly the wrong word for the ultimate outcome of Sasuke's first attempt to break the illusion.

"So this is not an impostor," Yashiro said, breaking the slightly awkward silence following Naruto's non-answer. "He's actually an Uchiha."

"Uchiha Sasuke," Naruto said. "And he really is, he's been checked and it matches."

"Despite Uchiha Sasuke's remains lying undisturbed," Yashiro said. "Although his body was destroyed in any case," he added unnecessarily. Even at the age of eight, Sasuke knew his body would have held secrets that the Uchiha clan would not have wanted to allow outsiders to have. Of course the remains of every Uchiha would be systematically destroyed before interment.

"I'm right here," Sasuke said. "Not dead."

"Of course not," Yashiro said, and Sasuke's fingers twitched. This was exactly the same man who'd accused and threatened his brother, and yet that made no sense. "You said the entire clan was killed?" Yashiro asked. "By Uchiha Itachi?"

Sasuke's lips stretched, but it couldn't quite be called a smile. "As you should know perfectly well, the Council was of the opinion that an Uchiha was behind the Nine Tails' attack on the Leaf. As you also know, that suspicion is why we were all moved out here, where we could be isolated and watched, and that is how the seeds of revolution were born. My brother, already an ANBU captain, didn't want to see another war. He told the Council of the Uchiha's plans, and they instructed him to kill his entire family. Which he did. And then the Council, in its infinite wisdom, labeled him a traitor and exiled him, so that the other hidden villages wouldn't learn of the Leaf's weakness and shame." Sasuke stopped for a moment. "But he left me alive. My survival was more important to him than everything else, and that is why I will see him avenged."

Absolute silence dropped over the room when Sasuke finished speaking. Both of Naruto's eyes were fixed on him in shock, and Yashiro's unseeing face was frozen in total blankness. Sasuke could even feel the surprise in the listeners placed around the room, spies that he was quite sure he wasn't supposed to know about.

"And he believes this story," Yashiro said finally.

"I hadn't heard that bit," Naruto said, voice shaking slightly. "The Council would never – the Uchiha clan wouldn't – that's the _Nine Tails_, why would they…" He blinked, visibly taking hold of himself.

"They would," Sasuke said savagely. "They _did_. They sealed the Nine Tails into _you_ when you were just a baby. Don't tell me they have some sort of principle they adhere to."

"Sasuke," Naruto said carefully. "You said the Nine Tails was sealed."

"It was. The Fourth Hokage sealed it into you." And oh, that had had some far-reaching consequences.

"The Fourth?" Naruto blinked, and his face twisted, pride and anger and vindication and disappointment flashing past almost more quickly than Sasuke could see.

"That's not exactly how it happened," Yashiro said, and now he sounded sympathetic. "Sasuke, sit down. Let me help you remember what happened to the Uchiha clan and the Village of the Hidden Leaf."

"To begin with," Yashiro said, "the demon Nine Tails wasn't sealed after the invasion."

_16 years, 5 months, 8 days ago:_

Alarms blared for the first time in months, the silence since the end of the last Great Ninja World War giving way to panic and smoke and pouring rain.

Yashiro woke suddenly and neatly, pulling on his clothing by pure reflex and instinct. It took him less than 90 seconds to go from solidly asleep to outside, gathering those under his command. It was unlikely that anyone else had more information than he did, but there were certain conventions one followed in times of war, and the warning sirens had snapped him right back into that mindset. "Report!" he barked, and someone actually had an answer.

"The Nine Tails is attacking the village!" The slightly hysterical voice belonged to Uchiha Setsuna. Yashiro shot him a hard look, and Setsuna visibly calmed himself. "The Village of Hidden Leaf is under attack by the demon Nine Tails, sir!" he repeated.

"Inform the clan head that we're heading out to engage," Yashiro snapped. "The rest of you, follow me." The village had to be defended and defended _now_; there was an advance guard, but Yashiro could hear the chaos in the rest of the village. The advance guard might very well not even reach the field at this rate.

The sight that met Yashiro's eyes as his squad raced towards the sound of the fox's demented howling chilled his blood. The advance guard had in fact made it onto the field, and was now in pieces all over it. As far as he could tell, not a single member had survived. A lone figure stood in front of the fox, arms flashing back and forth through the driving rain in a struggle to contain it.

As he got closer, Yashiro nearly stumbled in shock. The man pushing back the fox was none other than Namikaze Minato, the Fourth Hokage. _But he's been out of the country on a diplomatic mission for weeks now_, said a distant corner of Yashiro's mind. The Fourth was holding his ground, but Yashiro could see the strain on his face even at a distance.

"Spread out! Back up the Fourth!" Yashiro gestured the actual formation, knowing that his squad would follow instruction. "Those of you with the Sharingan, fucking use it! Use it now!"

Yashiro activated his own Sharingan; the Uchiha clan's bloodline limit was one of the few tools that had been shown to be effective against the fox. Although they couldn't combine their efforts, at least one of them should be able to break through and slow the fox down long enough for Minato to do… something.

Except that the fox didn't react to the Sharingan the way it should have; it was as if Yashiro was running up against a brick wall, and the wall didn't taste the way the demon fox should have. It was cold and dark and calculating, and it felt almost human. Out of the corner of his eye, Yashiro could see his squad fall one by one to fire and wind, bodies sprawling in the mud, the fox's tails whipping around its body and flame roaring from its mouth. He had no idea how the Fourth wasn't already dead, with the forces beating against his body, but he kept trying to contain the beast.

The air flickered next to the Fourth, and the Copy Ninja landed next to him. Yashiro was close enough to hear the exchange that followed, and if the soaking wet had left any warmth in his body, the Fourth's words would have leached it away.

"Sir!" the Copy Ninja shouted, hands already moving in the same pattern as the Fourth's, reinforcing the barrier. Yashiro began to feel a shred of hope; the Copy Ninja was young, but he was strong and brilliant, and between him and the Fourth Hokage, they might have a chance in hell of defeating the beast, or just holding it off until reinforcements scrambled themselves together. The village might not die after all. The fire still burning away contrarily reflected through the droplets of water flickering off the Fourth's hands, and Kakashi's, and for a minute it looked as though they were weaving a web of liquid fire to catch the fox.

"Get out of here, Kakashi!" the Fourth shouted, and Yashiro nearly stumbled in surprise. "Protect my son!" Yashiro did trip at that, barely managing to dodge a sheet of fire. Tongues of flame licked his face, and he shut off the pain. He could still see out of both eyes; the rest could wait.

_His son?_ The Fourth didn't have children. He couldn't. His wife was the Sacrifice, and the one thing that weakened the seal holding back the Nine Tails was childbirth. The bottom dropped out of Yashiro's stomach as he realized how the Nine Tails must have gotten free, and what the "diplomatic mission" must have been.

"Your son is safe!" the Copy Ninja shouted back, hands not faltering at all even as the Fourth hesitated. The barrier cracked, and the Nine Tails surged forward.

"He's not safe as long as this thing is out here!" Minato stopped, actually stopped, long enough to teleport the Copy Ninja away, and the barrier crumbled. The fox trampled him into the mud and the barest edge of one of its tails sent Yashiro spiraling into blackness.

Yashiro was shocked to awaken at all, and even more shocked when he learned the reason the Nine Tails hadn't responded properly to the combined Sharingan of the Uchiha clan. It had already been under control, tightly leashed by a member of the Uchiha clan thought dead since before the war had ended.

"Uchiha Obito," said Setsuna, once again delivering information in a bizarre parallel of the night of the invasion. "He calls himself Tobi now, and he wears a mask."

In the three weeks Yashiro had lain unconscious, one of very few survivors of the initial response to the fox's attack, Tobi had pulled back the fox and besieged the Leaf. His army was thousands upon thousands of copies of the same inhuman soldier, corpse-white and sharp-toothed.

"It calls itself Zetsu," said Setsuna.

"That doesn't explain how a genin screw-up like Obito could control the Nine Tails," Yashiro said, still healing, still too exhausted to do anything but talk and think. Obito had been trained by the Fourth, that much was true, but by all reports, he'd barely managed to awaken the Sharingan before dying in the field. It was thanks to Obito's sacrifice – and the Uchiha clan's generosity in letting him keep the single Sharingan eye – that the Copy Ninja had gotten his title. "What happened to the Fourth Hokage?"

Setsuna hesitated long enough that Yashiro reached for him.

"Tell me," Yashiro commanded, and his voice carried enough authority that Setsuna obeyed.

"There is no Fourth Hokage," he said.

"What do you mean, there is no Fourth?" If Namikaze Minato had died, it wouldn't remove his title.

"He has been tried for treason," Setsuna said. "And found guilty." As Yashiro stared at him in surprise, the whole story came tumbling out; how the Fourth had gotten his wife pregnant, how he had tried to hide it, how he had refused to give up the baby and fled the village instead. How the Third and the Council had, not wanting to invoke a civil war so soon after the last war, concealed the Fourth's absence, and how Uchiha Obito had found the couple and killed the Fourth's wife as she went into premature labor. How the ANBU had arrived too late, how the Copy Ninja had brought the blameless child to safety.

The rest of the story, Yashiro already knew; Obito – no, Tobi, now – had seized control of the Nine Tails and turned it upon the village that had abandoned him to death.

"Did the child survive?" Yashiro asked hoarsely.

"It's a healthy boy," Setsuna said. "Namikaze Naruto."

"Fuck." Yashiro leaned back. "For a kid. We're fucked over because Namikaze Minato couldn't give up his damn kid. And he dies almost before he even sees the boy."

"He's still alive," Setsuna said. "The Council will decide his punishment when – if he awakens."

Yashiro shook his head. "What a nightmare."

He had no idea at the time just how true that phrase was. The Leaf fought hard enough to destroy Tobi's blockade, but only because Tobi's attention was split between keeping the Leaf in check, putting the finishing touches on his subjugation of the Village of Hidden Mist, and his assault on the Village of Hidden Cloud.

Namikaze Minato woke, healed, and was returned to the front lines as too valuable an asset to execute for his treasonous actions. The Leaf's Legendary Three were sent out to assassinate Tobi and bring back the Nine Tails; the report of their failure and deaths came in the very day Namikaze Minato would have been sent to provide support.

_Present Day_

"And that was pretty much the end of it," Yashiro said. "There's nothing left of Cloud or Rock than holes in the ground. The Sand ninjas were killed or disbanded after they surrendered, and Mist was Tobi's base of operations all along."

"Then why," Sasuke asked, "does the Leaf get to keep its ninjas and its Academy?" That was the hole in the story, the part that didn't make sense. It would prove to be the stumbling block that would expose Yashiro's tale for the lie that it was.

Yashiro smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Because the Leaf is special. It's Tobi's home. He likes to give us the illusion of freedom to make our captivity taste even bitterer."

"Hn," Sasuke grunted. "And the reason you're all blind? Don't tell me _that_ happened during your mythical war."

Yashiro drew himself up, and for a very brief moment Sasuke could see the pride in the Uchiha name that had surrounded him as a very small child. "The Uchiha do not suffer subjugation gladly," he said, and then the sense of pride was gone as if it had never been. "But neither attempt to throw off our chains was successful, and each incident cost us half our vision." He paused. "The first also cost us our heir and his brother. The second cost us our clan head and his wife."

Sasuke closed his eyes. He'd almost hoped that his mother was alive; he'd known Itachi had been killed, he'd known when Fugaku was not in his home that his father must be dead, but he'd hoped to see his mother. No, despite everything, it was his brother that he'd really wanted to see, but it wasn't going to happen.

High-pitched laughter bubbled up around him, drilling into his ears from somewhere far away. He wanted to tell whoever it was to shut up, but his voice wouldn't obey. Sasuke realized that he was the one laughing, and then he couldn't stop.

"Naruto," Yashiro said, and that was somehow even funnier. Sasuke fell against the wall, holding his stomach with both hands. If he didn't keep his insides in, they would become his outsides, and wasn't that exactly the right punishment for everything he'd ever done wrong. Yashiro's story, his _lies_, his false history crawled along Sasuke's skin, dragging the breath from his lungs.

"You… you all let him die," he gasped, fighting for enough breath to actually speak through the laughter that just wouldn't stop. His sides hurt, the beginnings of a cramp sending slicing pain down his abdomen. "You fucking bastards, you got my brother killed!"

"Yeah, this was clearly a bad idea," Naruto said. "He can't stay here."

"He's an Uchiha –" Yashiro started, but Sasuke rather thought he looked relieved to have this little problem taken off his hands. It was hard to tell, though, with most of his attention focused on an attempt to physically cram the manic giggles back down his throat with both hands. It wasn't working, and the pain in his side was getting worse.

"Who needs medical attention," Naruto interrupted smoothly. "I'll take it from here."

"Have it your way," Yashiro said, and it was really getting difficult to breathe. Sasuke gasped for air through the laughter, chest starting to tighten and hurt. Black spots were swimming at the edge of his vision, but he couldn't stop – couldn't stop – it just kept bubbling up and he was going to die-

Something hit the side of his face, hard, and the choking laughter mercifully faded. He sucked in air – wonderful, sweet, glorious air – and the tightness under his ribs eased slightly. Panic that somehow he wouldn't be able to breathe again sparked, and suddenly the air around him didn't seem like enough. He was dimly aware that he was breathing too rapidly, too deeply, and nausea churned in his stomach. This was all wrong, so wrong, why couldn't he breathe properly, too much or not enough and the bile rose in the back of his throat.

Words buzzed in his ears, meaningless, and someone was _touching_ him, and slowly his sense of self returned. He was sitting against a wall, head between his knees, a bitter taste in his mouth. He was no longer in his childhood home; the window on the other side of the room showed him that he was no longer in the Uchiha compound at all.

"Here," Naruto said, and handed him a glass of water.

Sasuke rinsed out his mouth and spit blindly in whatever Naruto held in front of him, closing his eyes. His face felt cold, and when he reached up to see what was wrong with it, his fingertips came away wet.

"It's okay," Naruto said quietly, and Sasuke was overwhelmed with an aching desire to be home, where Naruto was loud and brash and wouldn't know gentle if it bit him on the ass and where it was so easy to hate the Leaf for what it had done to his older brother and his family. Where at least the known world wasn't under the thumb of a madman."It's okay," Naruto said again, and pulled Sasuke towards him.

"I don't – I can't –" He was _crying_, sobbing like a child, for the first time since he had been a child and lost his entire family at the hands of his brother. "They killed him, there was a chance that – I had – it could have been so different, and they killed him anyway."

"I know," Naruto said, and rubbed his back soothingly. Soft tendrils of foreign chakra brushed against him, and Sasuke had just enough presence of mind to recognize a healing technique.

Eventually the tears faded to leave a drained sort of almost peace. Naruto shifted, and then stood, pulling Sasuke to his feet as well. "In here," he said, and Sasuke just went with him. It was a bedroom, he thought, mostly because there was a bed in it. Naruto pushed him gently onto it, and Sasuke obediently went down. Rolling into a ball kept the emptiness from pressing out of his skin, and he squeezed his eyes shut. "Try to get some sleep," Naruto said, and Sasuke nodded, face pressed into a pillow.

Some shuffling noises followed by a door sliding told him that Naruto had left the room, but Sasuke could hear everything from the next room as clearly as if he were still right there.

"No, he's not stable at all," Naruto said, but Sasuke couldn't hear anyone else in the room. "He must be telling the truth," came Naruto's voice again. "His chakra is twisted around in the weirdest ways." There was another pause, and then "Yes, ways. More than one. One's tied to his eyes, one's tied to a scar on his left shoulder, and the third I can't figure."

Sasuke reached over his shoulder with his right hand, feeling where Orochimaru's curse seal had been. The scarred skin was smooth under his fingers, and he wondered again if some tiny bit of Orochimaru didn't remain. He didn't get too far down that particular mental road before Naruto's voice caught his attention again.

"Well, no shit." Pause. "Half the problem is that he wouldn't let you in." Another pause. "Well, that's why it took him two days to work up to a breakdown; your half-assed attempts to do whatever it was that you –" A very brief pause. "I'll talk to you that way if I want, Shizune, teacher or not!"

Ah, Sasuke's brain supplied. Shizune was the one who'd taught Naruto healing techniques. She had, in fact, tried to muck around with his chakra when he'd been taken to ANBU headquarters, and he'd thrown her right back out.

"Whatever's gone screwy because of his, uh, arrival here I think I can fix. The other two? Fuck, I don't even know what they are. They feel like he's had them a while, though, so maybe he knows how to manage them." A moment of silence, and then "Either way, he's got a hell of a lot of chakra and at least one Sharingan technique I've never seen." There was a longer pause, and then Naruto said something surprising. "Look, we kept asking how he got here. Shouldn't we be asking where he came from?"

"Can't be a worse hell than this," Sasuke whispered to himself, and fell dreams of Naruto interrupted his sleep, mostly the idiot's worried face and stray wisps of bright chakra slipping beneath his skin and relieving pressure he hadn't known was there.

Sasuke woke feeling like himself for the first time in days, although his chakra level was lower than it should have been. He frowned, trying to remember exactly what he'd been doing before going to sleep and trying to figure out how he'd gone from the middle of the woods to a bedroom. He had started off with Juugo, Suigetsu, and the reincarnated Orochimaru, to get some _answers_ while Tobi waged a war- Sasuke shuddered Tobi's name triggered something and the memories of the past three days poured back into his mind.

Just in case he'd been wrong while exhausted and injured, with twisted chakra pathways affecting his mind and judgment, Sasuke tried to dispel what might still be an illusion. The release seal didn't work, which matched what his memories showed him. He activated the Sharingan and looked around, now clear-headed enough to see what he hadn't before; there were no threads of chakra binding an illusion together.

The only other way to dispel an illusion would be to throw his chakra at it, but he recalled rather adverse side effects for very little gain the first two times he'd tried, and his chakra was still too low to deal with the consequences. Sasuke let it go for the moment. All the evidence he could see pointed to his being in a real place, despite a curious flatness to everything living.

Or he'd hallucinated the last three days, he thought with a half-smile. That was certainly possible. The hallucination theory was dispelled when the door opened and Naruto bounded into the room. "Oh, good, you're awake," he said cheerfully. He was wearing the same orange pants and green mesh shirt Sasuke remembered, which meant that it was Namikaze Naruto who stood in front of him. Sasuke couldn't quite find it in himself to be thrilled with the prospect, no matter how happy Naruto looked to see him.

"I owe a debt," he said, throwing the blanket back and standing. He had been stripped down to his underwear at some point, he noticed, but there was a pile of fresh clothing folded neatly next to the bed.

"No, you don't," Naruto said, turning his back with a slight blush.

"Not to _you_." It wasn't that at least part of him didn't appreciate that he'd been cared for and healed, but it hadn't had any adverse effect on Naruto or anyone at the ANBU prison. His former teacher was another matter; while part of Sasuke maintained that Kakashi had jumped in and taken the blame for Sasuke's blind attack on the village wards of his own accord and it was no responsibility of Sasuke's, the rest of him held that it was a matter of principle and he would acknowledge the debt just this once. "Kakashi-sensei."

"You keep calling him that," Naruto said, and Sasuke remembered that Naruto had said that Kakashi no longer trained genin teams.

"When do the 72 hours end?" Sasuke asked instead of answering the question Naruto wasn't actually asking.

"Uh, right about now," Naruto said. Sasuke left through the window, barely pausing to tug his shoes on before landing on the roof below.

As it turned out, Sasuke was just a few minutes too late.

The cliffs were empty when he approached, the stretch of rock that had held Kakashi bare and still bloodstained. Sasuke could see a few winking needles still stuck in the stone above the peak of the last rooftop before he reached the sloping ground leading up to the rock face, but Kakashi himself was gone.

A curious mixture of regret and relief started to wind its way through his chest, and then his momentum carried him past the roof. Kakashi was at the base of the cliff, either unconscious or dead, and crouched over him was a once-familiar figure in leaf-green spandex. Sasuke landed lightly a few feet away.

"You will not damage him any further," Sasuke said, letting quiet authority creep into his voice. "I have a debt that I will see repaid," he added, because the Might Guy he knew would respond to such a sentiment.

"Damage my eternal rival?" Guy said quietly, and his lips curled up in an almost bitter little smile. "Never."He turned towards Sasuke and grinned, the sun breaking through the cloud cover apparently for the express purpose of glinting off his very white teeth. "But I am heartened to know that you also care for him!" he boomed, at something approximating his normal level.

Sasuke couldn't help it; he actually flinched. It was barely a shiver, but he knew he'd reacted, and how he'd reacted, and he knew Guy had seen it. "I… I owe him," he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Is he still alive?"

"Yes." Guy hoisted Kakashi over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. "I shall see he receives the proper attention, and we will speak of this debt afterwards."

Sasuke had the sudden mental image of the Leaf's Sublime Green Beast of Prey tracking him all over town, demanding to discuss his debt and his honor. "I'll just come with you _now_."

Guy laughed, although quietly and without moving his shoulders. Sasuke had no idea how he pulled it off. "I accept."

Sasuke had the sinking feeling he'd just agreed to something else entirely, but he followed Guy toward the Leaf hospital. Rather than go inside, he lurked on the roof and tried to figure out exactly where he'd lost control of the situation. He was fairly sure it was when he'd actually started to talk to Guy instead of just turning around and leaving; Kakashi wasn't dead, Guy had had it well in hand, and there had been no reason to interfere any further. He'd just about made up his mind that there was no debt after all and it would be better if he just went when Guy flung open the rooftop door.

"Dynamic Entry!"

Sasuke dropped to the ground and watched Guy sail right over his head, one foot first. The hand to hand combat master landed lightly on his other side, laughing. "Well done."

Sasuke stood. "Do you have to do that to everyone?" he demanded. "Seriously?"

"Well." Guy put his hands on his hips. "To demonstrate youthful vigor-"

"Stop. Just stop. You're exactly the same." Sasuke would have kept going, but Guy was giving him an almost wistful look. "What?"

"Was your world so different?" Guy asked, tone completely at odds with his jaunty body language.

Sasuke huffed a short breath through his nose. "It really is."

"I see." Guy clapped him on the shoulder, and Sasuke nearly went down to one knee. "I know of the debt you think you have, youthful scion of the Uchiha clan."

"Please never call me that again," Sasuke said, but Guy was still talking.

"My eternal rival has not adapted well to the events after the Nine Tails invasion," he said, and his voice was still completely divorced from his posture. He looked exactly like the overly cheerful Guy that Sasuke had seen training his group of genin (often much to Neji's dismay and Sasuke's amusement), but he sounded like a different person. He sounded almost defeated, and Sasuke disliked the thought of a hopeless Guy despite himself. He hadn't thought he had a shred of compassion for any of Leaf's citizens left, but Guy was apparently managing to push some sort of button. "Three days ago was the first I have seen that Kakashi cared enough to do anything in far longer than I wish to remember ," Guy continued. "If there is any debt, it is my debt to you."

Sasuke was just going to have to give up expecting anything at all, because his predictions had gone straight to hell since landing in whatever this was. "You what?" he said cleverly, because he wasn't prepared for anything other than some sort of bizarre challenge. "Wasn't the invasion over sixteen years ago?"

"It was. He doesn't do anything by half. Once my eternal rival chooses a path, he sticks to it!"

"What path, exactly?" Sasuke asked, trying to feel his way through a conversation that wasn't going anywhere normal and regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. Throwing him further off-balance was the glimpse of what he was sure was some kind of seal inked onto the back of Guy's tongue, but he hadn't seen it clearly and he wasn't about to ask.

"That is far too long and personal a story for a rooftop," Guy said, and Sasuke forgot about the seal. "And it is not mine to tell."

"Right," Sasuke said, somewhat relieved that he wasn't going to have to discuss whatever the hell had happened to Kakashi. Besides, he knew his former teacher, and the man had a knack for bouncing back from just about anything, up to and including Itachi's Mangekyo Sharingan. Everything was probably fine. "I'll, uh, see you around."

"There is one more thing," Guy said, and the cheerful voice was back as if it had never left.

"Yes?" Sasuke said, somewhat guardedly.

"I understand you're staying with my young protégé," Guy said, and Sasuke shook his head to distract Guy from whatever he was going to suggest.

"I'm not staying with Lee," he said quickly. "Haven't seen him."

"Lee? No." Guy laughed again. "Naruto."

Sasuke's brain shut down in self-defense, because the thought of the already-exuberant Naruto having that loud boisterousness encouraged by someone like Might Guy would probably cause the world to implode in sheer melodrama, and that wasn't how Naruto had acted around him at all. "Naruto?" he repeated faintly.

"Yes," Guy said, clapping him on the shoulder again. Sasuke was frozen and barely even shifted under the impact. "I trust you will not damage him."

There was something incredibly threatening about the grin Guy was wearing, sunlight bouncing off his teeth and all, and Sasuke had to clamp his eyes shut before he ensnared Guy in a Tsukuyomi illusion out of pure defensive instinct. "I have no intention of damaging Uzumaki Naruto," he said, when he thought he had his reflexes under control.

"It's not your Uzumaki Naruto I'm worried about," Guy said.

"Namikaze! I have no intention of damaging Namikaze Naruto!" Maybe he wasn't quite as recovered as he'd thought that morning, if Might Guy could rattle him this badly. Sasuke took a closer look, and reevaluated. Guy was exuding killing intent; it was incredibly subtle, but incredibly strong. Once Sasuke had identified it, he could counter it, and the sense of nervousness vanished. "He's done nothing to harm my brother," he offered in explanation.

"Ah," Guy said. "Until next time, then!"

Sasuke almost expected a dynamic exit sort of kick, but Guy just bounded over the side of the roof. Sasuke elected to take the stairs, walking as inconspicuously as possible. It involved not moving like a ninja, which was both difficult and good hand to hand combat practice. Muscular control was important, after all, and moving so slowly gave him enough time to figure out why he hadn't noticed Guy's killing intent at first.

Sasuke came to the conclusion that everything was on a very slightly different wavelength, once he backed away from all of his preconceptions. A subtle sense of wrongness resolved itself into a simple sense of difference, and the world around him regained its depth.

"If this isn't an illusion, then I'm somewhere else, and I need to find a way back," he said softly. The most reasonable place to start looking for a doorway home was where he'd landed when he'd come through in the first place. Sasuke turned his steps to where he thought he'd woken up.

A sense of frustration drove him back to Naruto's home – or what he presumed was Naruto's home – long after the sun had sunk below the horizon. He couldn't _remember_ where he'd woken, and he couldn't find the place, and there was a bizarre dichotomy between the ninja and civilian neighborhoods setting his teeth on edge.

The ninjas looked like the citizens of Sound while Sasuke had been training there; cowed and just a little fearful, hiding apprehension behind brazen overconfidence or silent stoicism. The signs of fear were there, though, in well over half the ninja population, if one knew how to look. Sasuke was well versed in estimating the emotional state of a potentially hostile population, and the Leaf was drenched in the scent of defeat.

The civilian quarters were another matter entirely; Sasuke could almost see the sky change to a brighter blue when he crossed the first street. The people were friendly and smiling, with none of the blend of apprehension and pride that was the usual for civilian residents of a ninja village. They simply smiled, courteous and helpful to a fault.

Sasuke wanted to rip all of their blandly happy faces off and see if their mechanical cheer shifted by even a single iota. He wasn't about to let a sense of unease at the aura of rainbows and sunshine drive him away, but it did him no good. He couldn't figure out where he'd woken.

"Oh, good, you're back," Naruto said cheerfully when Sasuke walked in the door. Now that he was looking for it, Sasuke could see traces of Guy. The orange spandex jumpsuit was also a pretty significant clue. It was exactly the same shade of orange as the weighted leg warmers and presumably also weighted long fingerless gloves, and clashed absolutely horribly with Naruto's olive green standard-issue weapons vest.

"So," Sasuke said, choosing not to comment on the outfit. If he pretended it wasn't there, he would be able to preserve his illusion of Naruto as having some minor semblance of intelligence. "Where, uh, where did I – where was I when I got here?"

Naruto blinked and rattled off a location; Sasuke had gone past it half a dozen times. "Anyway, I'm doing hand to hand combat practice, you want in?"

"Sure," Sasuke said. He'd be able to see the place better in the morning anyway.

By the third morning he woke in what was possibly Naruto's spare bedroom, Sasuke had developed a routine. It was miserable, and he hated it, but it was the one single thing that wasn't in a state of flux between his memory and his senses.

Every morning he woke and made his way toward the kitchen. He made two cups of tea, one of which went to Naruto (who didn't always drink the tea; sometimes he was still asleep, or had woken and gone). Then he slipped into his clothes, stopped by the bathroom, and washed his hands.

Once dressed, Sasuke put on his shoes and stepped outside, searching for any break in the illusion. It was habit by now, although he was pretty sure he wasn't actually trapped in one. Upon failing to find a break, he went into town, wrapped in a warm jacket, to the spot where he'd been found unconscious.

On the second day, he'd seen something odd with the Sharingan. There were twisted threads of what wasn't quite chakra and hovered on the edges of his vision. If he activated the Mangekyo Sharingan, those traces vanished altogether, so he looked with the lowest level of Sharingan he could manage.

The threads were shaped into what looked almost like a tunnel, and almost like some sort of door, but he couldn't figure out how to get it to open. He spent as much time as he could prodding it with different types of chakra, trying to map out its circuitous pathways, trying to get it to open up and take him back home. After he'd tried smashing it with Lightning Cutter, civilians and ninjas alike left him alone when he stood in that particular spot, staring at empty air with his Sharingan eyes.

He spent the afternoons training in hand to hand combat techniques only. He didn't want anyone to see him practicing ninja techniques or illusions, and most of those techniques had been flawlessly recorded by the Sharingan in any case. Hand to hand combat techniques would maintain his physical strength and his chakra reserves, though, and he was going to need those when he got home. Someone was going to pay dearly for this little side trip.

Some days he was summoned back to the ANBU headquarters for more questioning or for medical scans, although the interrogation was gentler than it had been on the first days and no one seemed to be able to find anything physically wrong with him.

"You don't seem to harbor any ill will towards this village," the Third said, perhaps ten days after Naruto had collected Sasuke from his cell.

"No," Sasuke said. "Not this village." It wasn't his home, after all, and these were not the people who had consigned his brother to genocide and death and exile. He saw no reason to actively harm any of _them_, even if they did bear similarities the people he had known in childhood.

"You're free to go or stay as you please." The unspoken words nearly drowned out what the Third had actually said; Sasuke would remain under surveillance if he stayed, and if he left there would perhaps be an unfortunate accident. Lack of malice detected or not, Sasuke was still an incredibly dangerous man and a weapon to be put to use. Although as far as Sasuke could tell, the Leaf's weapons were a rusty group full of wasted potential.

"I would like to stay," he said, mostly because the gate was still there, and he was sure he could get back through it somehow. He couldn't imagine that the Leaf, as subjugated and spineless as it was, could have a legitimate use for him, and in any case, he'd long since decided that only he could decide how he would be used.

"Very well." The Third returned his attention to the paperwork on his desk, or at least he appeared to. Sasuke knew perfectly well that the Third was still aware of every move he made.

Except for those incidents, Sasuke barely saw anyone other than Naruto, although he did occasionally see Lee. He and Naruto were a giant puddle of melodrama every time they were together, and Sasuke did his best to remain distant in every sense on those days.

Every day, the gate traces grew fainter, and he looked that much harder for the flaw in what he no longer believed was Itachi's or Tobi's illusion.

The routine lasted until the day after he couldn't find any traces of the maybe-gate at all, and spent the morning shouting at where it should have been. He spent the rest of the day staring motionless at the ceiling; if the gate was gone there was no way to get home, and what was left for him if he couldn't avenge his brother's death? But the sun rose again, and he got up purely out of habit. When he went into the kitchen to make tea, someone was already inside. Sasuke looked at the familiar spiky blond hair without really looking. It didn't matter anyway. "Good morning, Naruto," he said, because at least he could be polite to his host.

"Who the fuck are you?" said someone completely unfamiliar.

Sasuke stared, shocked out of apathy. "Naruto, there's someone in your house!" he shouted, and dropped into a defensive crouch. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" he snapped.

"That's my goddamn line," the stranger hissed. He looked familiar, although his face looked too thin, his body withered from disuse. It wasn't just that he looked like Naruto, either, although the resemblance was striking. He reminded Sasuke of something else. "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"

"_Your_ house?" Sasuke turned toward the door, without taking his eyes from the stranger, and shouted again. "Naruto!"

"Fuck, shut up, it's too early for this," Naruto mumbled, stumbling through the door with sleepy eyes. "Hi, dad. What do you want, Sasuke?"

"_Dad_?" Sasuke repeated incredulously. _Naruto's father is still alive?_ He'd just assumed that Naruto's parents were both dead, as they were back in his world.

"Sasuke?" Naruto's father said. "Who is he and what's he doing here?"

Naruto frowned, looking a little more awake. "I could have sworn – haven't you two met?"

"No!" they both snapped in near-perfect unison. It had been just shy of three weeks since Sasuke had landed in wherever this was and just over two since he'd started sleeping in Naruto's spare bedroom; how had he not run into what was apparently a third housemate in all that time? He hadn't even felt the man's chakra, although Naruto's father didn't seem to have that much of it to detect.

"I told you, Dad, my friend is staying with us. This is, uh, Uchiha Sasuke. Sasuke, this is my father, Namikaze Minato." Naruto yawned again, and Sasuke noticed something odd – Naruto's tongue had a seal inked onto the back. It looked familiar; a bare second of searching his memory gave Sasuke the image of the same seal on the back of Guy's tongue. "I had a late night. I'm going back to bed," Naruto said, dragging Sasuke's attention back to the present. He turned around and shuffled back out of the kitchen, bouncing off the doorway twice. Sasuke grabbed his shoulders and pointed him in the right direction.

Minato was staring at Sasuke when he turned back around. "Uh," Sasuke said. "Nice to meet you." Minato did not have the tongue seal, Sasuke noted absently, and filed the information away for later consideration.

"Likewise," Minato said, and shifted under Sasuke's gaze until he was standing up straight. "Tea?"

"Please," Sasuke said, and then something clicked. Minato's face had been carved in the cliffs above the village; he was the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, who had sealed the Nine Tails into Naruto seventeen years before. Minato's face wasn't carved into the cliffs now, Sasuke realized. A tiny knot of tension at a previously unrecognized difference in the background scenery loosened itself.

"Uchiha," said Minato, and handed Sasuke a cup.

"Thanks," Sasuke said. "Um, yes."

"With both eyes intact," Minato said. "I thought your entire family was blinded."

_Well_, Sasuke thought, _that's where Naruto's lack of tact comes from_. "It's a long story," he said.

"I've got time," Minato said, and rested his chin on one hand while staring unblinkingly with disturbing and almost glassy eyes at Naruto.

By the time Sasuke finished telling his long story, the usual time to try to open the gate had passed, and Minato was looking at him with a very odd expression.

"Another world," he said.

"Yes." Sasuke took a sip of tea. It was stone cold. "Well, probably," he amended. He didn't really know.

"And my son was the Sacrifice for the Nine Tails." Minato lifted his cup, glanced at it as if surprised to find it empty, and put it back down.

"Yes." Cold tea wasn't so bad, Sasuke decided.

"And, after a series of fantastical events, you found yourself here. Completely by accident. Don't know how you got here." Minato's too-thin fingers tapped at the edge of the teacup.

"Yes." Sasuke drained the cup.

"Well, then." Minato stood and collected both cups. "Welcome to my home, Uchiha Sasuke. Try to leave the crazy at the door next time."

"Um. Thank you for your hospitality," Sasuke said, not entirely sure how to respond to that. Minato flashed him a smile and wandered out the door opposite the one Naruto had used. Inexplicably, he took both teacups with him. "What the fuck," Sasuke said to no one in particular.

The house seemed incredibly claustrophobic, with Naruto the medic sleeping upstairs and Minato the shadow of the Fourth Hokage doing who knew what in the other room. Sasuke pulled on the first set of clothes that he could find and made his way toward the memorial. There was a particularly tall pine tree a few dozen feet away, and he climbed partway up to settle out of sight in its branches where he couldn't be easily seen. The cold and damp outside fell away as Sasuke turned his thoughts inward.

_Where am I?_ He couldn't answer that question, although he was fairly sure by now that he hadn't been stuffed into some kind of illusion. If he had been, he would just have to wait for rescue or die inside it; he couldn't break his way out of it or even find its edges.

_How do I get home?_ He couldn't answer that one, either, because the closest thing he'd found to a way home was the chakra-tangle where he'd woken up, and it was gone. It was gone beyond his ability to see or find.

_What if there's something else?_ There had to be someone somewhere who knew something about other worlds; there had been mentions made in some of the Uchiha secret records of other dimensions, at the very least, and summoned beasts came out of a portal as well.

_Was I summoned?_ Sasuke blinked at that thought. He'd never looked to see if a summoned creature left any kind of residual traces, but even if they did, he couldn't think of a single way that he could have been called without some sort of contract.

_I didn't sign any sort of contract. This line of thought is ridiculous._ Well, he had to agree with his internal voice there.

_Why do I keep noticing people with seals on their tongues?_ It wasn't just Naruto and Guy, he was fairly sure. Going over his memories of the various people he'd seen on the streets, Sasuke could think of at least eight more with the same seals; he'd noticed something different subconsciously, but it hadn't seemed important at the time. None of those people were from the Uchiha clan, though, he thought. Either way, it didn't seem likely to be a part of the answer to getting back home.

_I need more information._ The problem was how to go about getting it. Sasuke was fairly sure he could get his hands on whatever was actually inside the village; he was stronger than nearly everyone there, now that he'd managed to fully recover, but it would be less trouble in the long run if he could maneuver his way into legitimately collecting as much of the data as possible. Sasuke knew when to pick his battles, and immediately trying to drown the Leaf in fire and blood wasn't any kind of long-term solution. No, for the moment, at least, he would play by the rules.

_The Uchiha clan records shouldn't be a problem. Start there._Sasuke nodded to himself, dusted the snow off his head and shoulders, and returned to town. It was past sunset; he'd visit the Uchiha compound in the morning. Timing was important, after all, and if he was going to play the part of I'm-Adjusting-To-My-New-Life, asking to see the clan history early in the morning was both polite and symbolic of a fresh beginning. The symbolism wouldn't be lost on Yashiro, either.

Naruto was just trudging up to the door when Sasuke got back, yawning. The tongue seal was clearly visible now that Sasuke was looking for it, just barely darker than the pink of Naruto's tongue toward the front and shading to black near the back.

"Rough day?" Sasuke asked, trying for a mix of sympathetic and casual. From the way Naruto glared at him, he didn't think he'd succeeded to well.

"Shizune has me doing fiddly little things with tiny amounts of chakra. It's horrible," Naruto complained, and shoved the door open. "We're home!" he called down the hall.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?" Sasuke closed the door behind them and toed off his shoes.

"About what?" Naruto reset the wards on the door.

"You've – I mean, I appreciate the hospitality," Sasuke started carefully. "But I shouldn't be taking advantage of you like this."

"Yeah, about that," Naruto said. "Are you staying?" He wandered into the living room as he spoke, giving the impression that he didn't really care. Sasuke followed.

"I was going to find my own place," Sasuke said, but Naruto shook his head.

"No, no, I meant are you staying in the village?" Naruto looked around the living room as if it had done something unexpected, and went into the kitchen.

"For now, I guess," Sasuke said, following him again and resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "I have more thoughts on how to find a way home, and I need to be here to try them out."

Naruto grinned, with an intensity very reminiscent of Lee at his most melodramatic, and put his hands on his hips without interrupting the process of reheating something from the refrigerator. "Then I must insist you stay here."

"No, I couldn't," Sasuke started.

"You can't afford your own place," Naruto said bluntly. "Unless you register as a genin, and then you're eligible for the draft. At your age, Mist will pull you out of here immediately to see why you're registering so late. So it's either me, or the Uchiha compound, and you don't want to be there."

"Oh?" Sasuke said, a little unsettled by Naruto's directness. It wasn't that he was wrong, or that Naruto was normally anything less than direct, but he was a little more astute than Sasuke was used to. "What if I do?"

"You don't," Naruto said flatly, which would have been exactly the wrong way to convince Sasuke to stay with him if he'd really wanted to go and live with the ghosts of his family. "Go talk to them, if you want, but you don't want to stay there." He relaxed and smiled again. "Besides, I like having you around."

"You barely see me," Sasuke pointed out.

"Yeah, well." Naruto shrugged and held a plate out to Sasuke. "It's still nice."

Sasuke blinked and took the plate. "Thanks." He joined Naruto at the small kitchen table, poking at the concoction with his chopsticks. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, but it was probably more or less edible. Probably. "This is the second time you've said something about a Mist draft," he said after deciding to let the plate cool down. "What exactly is it?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," Naruto replied, mouth full. He swallowed before continuing. "The Mist drafts some of our ninjas every month; genin, chuunin, jounin, pretty much everyone, even the ANBU. Although not to be ANBU over there, because they don't really have ANBU, and it's not like our ANBU does what it used to do, anyway."

"Draft them to do what?" It wasn't like Mist didn't have ninjas of its own.

"Oh. Well. stuff. Everything goes through Mist anyway." Naruto returned to eating.

"The taste of freedom makes captivity taste bitterer," Sasuke quoted. "Do Mist ninjas come here?"

"Nah," Naruto said. "You saw the wards. They set off an alarm if something screwy happens. I think Tobi likes to let us plot minor uprisings so he can have fun countering them, anyway."

"Plot minor uprisings?" Sasuke blinked. He hadn't thought any of the Leaf citizens had any spirit left.

"You'll have to ask the Uchiha clan about that," Naruto said, and the conversation was over.

Not that Sasuke asked directly about minor uprisings, at least not immediately; after his rather precipitous exit from the Uchiha compound, he hadn't been back. To say the reaction to his abrupt return was suspicious would be the understatement of the week.

"No," said Shisui, with an expression that would have been a terrifying glare if he'd had either eye left.

A shiver had run down Sasuke's spine at the sight of Shisui's face, and he'd remembered that Itachi had had one of Shisui's eyes; not that he'd used it in the traditional manner. Itachi had put the eye in a crow and stored it in that idiot Naruto. Remembering where one of Shisui's eyes was reminded Sasuke that Danzo had stolen the other, and that brought him back around the familiar cycle to his brother's death. With a little more difficulty than usual, he shoved the memories away. "Shisui," he started.

"Don't you dare say his name," Shisui said. "I don't know who you are, but I know who you're pretending to be."

"I'm not Ita-" Sasuke started. His request to see the more or less public Uchiha records had inexplicably produced Shisui, but all his brother's best friend seemed to want was for him to vanish.

"I told you not to say his name," Shisui hissed, and Sasuke edged out of reach of his twitching hands.

"Look, I don't want to be here any more than you want me to be here," he snapped. "All I want is to get the fuck out of here and go back home."

"Then go," Shisui said.

"I _can't_." It would look bad if Sasuke hit a blind man, he reminded himself, and punching Shisui wouldn't help him get information from the living ghosts of his family. "I'm stuck _here_, and so help me, the Sharingan is the closest thing to a portal to another world that I know of. If there's any relevant information here, I need it."

"I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you're not Uchiha Sasuke. Sasuke died. Along with Itachi. Stop playing this ridiculous game and get out."

"I wish I'd never laid eyes on that crow," Sasuke snapped, because if not for Itachi's damn crow, his brother wouldn't have been a self-aware undead thing. Sasuke was willing to bet that was the start of this entire mess, and it wasn't like Shisui was willing to be reasonable. "But I did. And now I'm here. And I don't want to be. The sooner you let me in there, the sooner I'm gone."

"Crow?" said Shisui, and it was starting to get creepy, how it looked like he was actually staring right at Sasuke.

"Yes, crow," Sasuke said. "Are you going to let me in or not?"

"What crow?" And now Shisui was going to fixate on the ill-omened bird of suck.

"The one that he put your other eye one that broke the Impure World reason that I got to see my brother walking around without a heartbeat." Sasuke stepped backwards. There was really no reason he couldn't just go over the wall; how hard could it be to avoid a bunch of blind ex-ninjas?

"Why would you say that?" Shisui asked, and most of the hostility was gone.

"Because it's the truth!" Sasuke paused. "Wait, which part? It's all true, but which part specifically?"

"The crow!"Shisui snapped. "Why would you say that he put one of my eyes in a crow?"

"Because he _did._ And then he stored it in my idiot ex-teammate. And-" Sasuke broke off. "Look, it's a really long story. Are you going to let me in there or what?"

"You know you're completely insane," Shisui said, almost conversationally. "There's no such thing as Impure World Resurrection." He was standing aside, though, and he fell into step beside Sasuke as Sasuke made his way toward where he knew the records should be kept.

"Oh, sure. Tell that to Itachi."

"This way."Shisui was leading him somewhere else entirely. Sasuke followed, keeping that much closer of an eye on his surroundings. "What was he like, as an adult?"

"Um." Coming from most people, that would have been a fairly easy question to answer, but this was Itachi's closest friend. Sasuke suddenly didn't really want to have to tell him what Itachi had done. "He was very dedicated to the Leaf," he said finally.

"I heard what you said to Yashiro," Shisui told him. "I know that you claimed he killed all of us. Why?"

"Tell me why you changed your mind about me, and I'll tell you what Itachi made me grow up with," Sasuke countered, his feelings of sympathy vanishing into anger at Shisui's semi-manipulative prying.

"That was Itachi's project when – that was Itachi's last project," Shisui said after a moment. "He wanted to know if a Sharingan eye could be implanted into something other than another human, and he thought one of his crows would be the best bet. But it was just speculation; he wasn't about to steal someone's eye just to test a theory."

Sasuke let that thought sink in; he'd always figured Itachi had just _done_ it and hadn't known whether or not it would work. Then again, his Itachi might very well have done the transplant on the fly.

"You were going to –" Shisui said, and Sasuke interrupted.

"When I was eight, he murdered the entire Uchiha clan. Ninjas and civilians, children, the elderly, he used the Tsukuyomi on me and made me watch them all die," he said shortly.

"But if – he was _thirteen_," Shisui said, and Sasuke almost felt sorry for the horror in the other man's voice.

"He was ANBU," Sasuke said. "ANBU captain. He was as much of an adult as anyone here."

"At thirteen," Shisui repeated flatly.

"Entered when he was ten," Sasuke said. "I thought you knew him."

"Fuck," Shisui said, and Sasuke smiled. "Here we are," Shisui added a few seconds later, and Sasuke looked up to see a building with an air of desertion. It was not where he'd seen the open clan records; he couldn't remember what had been in this particular structure.

"Thanks," Sasuke said absently, half his attention on a potential ambush and the rest on the building itself and went inside.

It took Sasuke two days to go through the Uchiha library, sifting through pages and pages of useless information. The public Uchiha clan historical records (authentic, as far as he could tell, and matching what he'd learned as a child up until the point where the Nine Tails attacked the village) painted a not particularly flattering picture of the Hidden Leaf as Tobi marched relentlessly through the known world and used the power of the Nine Tails to grind it beneath the heel of his boot.

Not that Tobi was limited to the power of the Nine Tails, Sasuke read. The Nine Tails was a massive hammer, suitable for smashing and destruction, but useless if Tobi wanted anything left standing in its wake. His typical pattern was to annihilate initial defenses with the pure power of the Nine Tails, and then to send in his army afterwards. That strategy was a flaw, wrote the unknown Uchiha record-keeper, that had not been properly exploited by the Leaf's incompetent leadership.

The Fourth Hokage was described as selfish, putting his own desires ahead of the good of the village, while the Third was depicted as spinelessly acquiescing to a military dictatorship despite the Leaf's strengths. The Uchiha clan, on the other hand, had (heroically, according to the tone of the records) tried not once but twice to take responsibility its rogue member, as was only just and proper. The first attempt had been more or less straight-out assassination, and that had led to each adult Uchiha ninja losing his or her left eye. As further punishment, both the Uchiha heir (Itachi, Sasuke thought, his chest contracting painfully) and his younger brother had been executed.

"So that was the conspiracy," Sasuke murmured.

Three years after the failed first attempt, the Uchiha clan apparently had tried again. The second attempt had been, still according to the Uchiha records, much more subtle. Those Uchiha ninjas comparatively less proficient had given up their remaining eyes to those more skilled, but the end result was similar. No adult Uchiha was left with either eye, although anyone who had married into the clan was left with the privilege of sight.

"None of this is what I want," Sasuke said to the pile of scrolls and books on the second day, all of which were trying very hard to convince the reader that the Uchiha clan was still holding onto the tattered remnants of its honor and dignity while hiding just how tattered both had become. Reading between the lines, it was easy to see how badly the Uchiha had handled themselves; had the clan not acted on its own without sufficient preparation (twice!), the Leaf wouldn't have been deprived of a rather formidable asset.

The clan also would not have gotten Itachi killed; for that, Sasuke would have assassinated Fugaku, were the man not dead already. Sasuke couldn't quite find it in his heart to regret that this alternative version of his father had committed ritual suicide in atonement for how he had failed the clan.

There had been a few hints here and there as to the Sharingan's dimension-crossing capabilities, but nothing helpful. Sasuke replaced the final item, after throwing it across the room hard enough to dent the wall, and exhibited immense levels of self-control by not burning down the entire library as he left.

"Done already?" asked Shisui. He'd been lounging around nearly the entire time Sasuke had been searching, offering no help at all. Not that Sasuke had asked.

"I'm done here," Sasuke said. "Where do you keep the rest?"

Shisui's face shut down, becoming totally expressionless between one breath and the next. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, but he'd already given himself away.

"Yes, you do," Sasuke said, hanging onto patience by the thinnest of threads.

Something in his voice must have gotten through to Shisui, for the other man straightened almost imperceptibly into a wary defensive position. "Then you also know that I cannot allow an outsider access –" he began.

"Bullshit," Sasuke interrupted. "I'll burn this whole complex to the ground if I have to. It would be no great hardship to see you all dead again."

If anything, Shisui's face got even colder. "You'd be dead before you hit the ground if you tried," he said softly.

Sasuke laughed. "Thirty-six hours. I'll be back in thirty-six hours." The way Shisui's eyes narrowed, Sasuke could almost believe that the other man could see him. "Give me what I want, and I'll be gone," he said, as persuasively as he could. He couldn't quite hypnotize someone who couldn't see his eyes, but he'd learned how to spin his chakra with the best.

Shisui licked his lips, a sudden sheen of sweat covering his face, and Sasuke could all but hear his heart rate speed up. "Thirty-six hours," he said.

"You want me gone. I want me gone. I think the clan records will tell me how to do that." Sasuke left the building, confidence in every footstep. He could hear Shisui sag against the wall behind him, and he let himself smile.

"Oh, good, you're taking a break, this is perfect timing," Naruto said the next morning, when Sasuke sat cross-legged in the kitchen with his cup of tea instead of heading straight out.

"Uh," Sasuke started, but Naruto was already talking over him. Several loud and very confused seconds later, Sasuke found himself trailing after Naruto as his host bounded towards one of the more remote training grounds. A sparring match would be good, though, he reasoned with himself, because practice was never a bad thing and he'd spent the last two days hunched over hundreds and thousands of pages covered in poor handwriting.

"Hi!" Naruto called out, and Sasuke looked ahead of him to see two similar figures clad in dark green waiting.

"Oh, no," he said, skidding to a stop. "I did not sign up for this." Naruto had somehow anticipated his movement, though, and Sasuke's forward momentum didn't come to a halt until he was less than a foot away from Guy. Naruto had already stripped off his jacket and pants to reveal the orange spandex jumpsuit, complete with legwarmers. Sasuke wasn't sure the lack of a vest improved the outfit at all.

"Sasuke!" Guy boomed, and once again Sasuke could see his teeth glittering under an overcast sky.

"It's nice to have you here," Lee added, with just as bright a smile. Sasuke blinked. There was something brittle about both of them.

"I'm not –" he started, and Naruto all but threw him towards Guy.

"Warm up in pairs!" Naruto called cheerfully. "Have you seen Neji or Tenten?" he added, looking at Lee.

"Later," Lee said, and it occurred to Sasuke that the Hyuuga Byakugan and the Sharingan had some striking similarities. If the Uchiha clan records didn't have the information he needed, the Hyuuga records might. And the Hyuuga clan members still had their eyes.

"What constitutes a warm up?" he asked Guy, to start laying the foundations of his backup plan.

"I'm glad you asked," Guy said, and that was how Sasuke found himself running on his hands around the training field. He had to admit later that it was excellent balance practice.

Neji showed up in the middle of Sasuke's first hand-to-hand match with Lee. Much to Sasuke's disgust, both of them were operating under handicaps so as not to cause undue damage to the training ground; Lee's right hand was tied behind his back, and Sasuke didn't activate the Sharingan.

"I'll try not to kill you accidentally," Sasuke said, but Lee just grinned. "No, I mean it," Sasuke said, frustrated. Cooperation with his temporary hosts for the sake of information was one thing, but indulging rampant idiocy was another.

"I think I will surprise you," Lee said, taking up a ready stance.

"On your head be it," Sasuke growled, and as soon as Guy blew the whistle (and it was an actual whistle) he tried to incinerate Lee with a fireball. As Sasuke had more or less expected, Lee flipped out of the way. He couldn't hide his location with a clone, though, or practice body substitution. To make matters worse, Sasuke could tell that this Rock Lee had only rarely seen actual combat. It was a matter of less than a minute before he had the other boy on his back with lightning at his throat.

Lee blinked up at him, something Sasuke couldn't read crossing his face. Sasuke pulled his chakra back and let the lightning dissipate. "I told you," he said. "You're going to need both hands." He climbed to his feet, slowly, radiating an aura of not-a-threat, but both Naruto and Guy were staring at him. Naruto's expression matched Lee's, not that Sasuke knew what it was, but Guy had recognition on his face, and something very like pity.

Sasuke stalked back to his side of the ring without looking any further at either of them, which somehow happened to be right next to where Guy was standing.

"You've seen combat," Guy said softly. When Sasuke looked at him, the pity was gone, and he wondered if he'd imagined it. "Real combat."

"Yes," Sasuke said shortly.

"Hm," Guy said, and vaulted over to Lee. Sasuke stopped paying attention to his speech after about three syllables in; he'd seen Neji and Tenten wander up to the training ground after the third kick he'd dodged. Both of them were warming up, with Naruto keeping them company. Sasuke pulled off his jacket, ignoring the chilly bite of the wind. He could pretend he'd actually gotten his heart rate high enough to feel warmer, he supposed, and the stupid thing was confining anyway.

"Second round!" Guy declared, and Lee had untied his hand but kept his weighted leg warmers on. Sasuke looked him over, assessing whether or not it was worth his time to spar with Lee again. "Naruto!" Guy added.

"So who taught you that?" Naruto asked, bouncing over to face Sasuke. He still had the leg warmers on.

"Lightning Cutter?" Sasuke asked. Naruto moved a little differently than Lee, but Sasuke couldn't quite predict how he would have developed his fighting style without the Nine Tails.

"Chidori," Naruto corrected, and Sasuke shook his head.

"Surely you can see the difference," he said, and Naruto's eyes widened. Sasuke grinned, and let Naruto come to him.

It took longer to pin Naruto down than it had Lee; Namikaze Naruto had much better chakra control than Uzumaki Naruto, but much less stamina without the Nine Tails to draw on. He still made shadow clones, but he used them more tactically rather than rushing Sasuke en masse. He didn't quite have the raw edge that Lee did, but he didn't exhibit as much experience as Uzumaki Naruto.

At least, not until the tail end of the match, when Naruto countered Sasuke's Lightning Cutter with the Chidori, and Sasuke dropped his entire charge in shock. The resulting boom tossed them both out of the ring, although Sasuke came up on his feet. "You don't have an affinity for lightning!" he shouted.

"Well, not much of one," Naruto said, hoisting himself upright. "Took a lot of training to develop."

"That's jounin level training," Sasuke said, suspicious now of the apparent similarities to his world.

"Yeah, well, I passed the chuunin exam five years back." Naruto wiggled his fingers, all of which appeared slightly crispy. "Ow," he added, and Tenten thumped him in the back of the head with an open hand.

"How many times have you been told about proper grounding?" she snapped, but her expression was soft.

"You haven't damaged your chakra pathways," Neji volunteered from off to the side, and Naruto grinned.

"I know." He held out his hand when Guy gestured for it, catching the med kit Tenten tossed him with his uninjured hand. She waited until it was firmly in his grip and then took off running laps around the field.

Sasuke bit down on the question of where Naruto had learned the Chidori just before it left his tongue; there was really only one person who would have – could have – taught it to him. "You're aware of the limitations of that technique," he said.

"Oh, I know," Naruto said. "But I'm fast enough to handle it. Right, Guy-sensei?"

"Yes, my youthful student!" Guy said, flashing a double thumbs-up without pausing in bandaging up Naruto's burns.

"Lee can dodge it, though," Naruto said. "I have to be faster."

"Yes, but only sometimes!" Lee said brightly. "I must endeavor to be faster as well!"

"You both make me so proud!" Guy grabbed both of them in a hug, and Sasuke could almost see all three of them crying tears of joy. "The springtime of your youth shall blossom even more brilliantly!"

"Fuck me," he muttered under his breath. They were all clearly insane. He hadn't been quiet enough, though, because Neji huffed a little laugh under his breath.

"Hyuuga Neji," he said, when Sasuke looked at him. "That's Tenten."

"I know," Sasuke said. "I mean, I've met you. I mean –"

"Oh, you're the one," Neji said. "The one who thinks he's from another world."

Sasuke just looked at him. "I'm just trying to get home," he said, because it was true enough that its admission was giving up considerable advantage, and because Neji was literally looking right through him.

"You really believe that," Neji said after a moment. Sasuke shrugged as guilelessly as he could and smiled. _You've planted the seed, now back off_, said his inner voice, and Sasuke politely excused himself to challenge Tenten to a match.

Naruto smiled happily at him on the way home under the setting sun, and for one very brief second he looked like the twelve year old who'd been on Team 7 with Sasuke.

"Guy is your jounin teacher?" Sasuke said, before memory prompted him to say something he would probably regret, and Naruto nodded. "I thought a three man cell was standard."

"Oh, it is," Naruto said. "But only seven of us graduated the academy that year."

"Not eight?" Sasuke said, remembering his own graduating class.

"Me, Sakura, Chouji, Shikamaru, Ino, Kiba, and Shino," Naruto rattled off. "Anyone you know?" he asked curiously.

"The same graduates, except we also had Hyuuga Hinata, and myself." Sasuke pushed Naruto's door open.

"Oh." Naruto followed him inside, pushing his shoes off and padding inside on bare feet. "Who was I on a team with?"

"Sakura and me." Sasuke smiled, but Naruto wasn't watching, and he didn't bother putting any warmth into the expression. "Kakashi was our jounin teacher."

"Ah," Naruto said after a moment, clearly trying and failing to respond with something other than horror and sympathy.

"He wasn't particularly good at it," Sasuke said shortly, and that was the end of the conversation.

Sasuke didn't see Naruto at all over the next several days; Shisui brought him to the vault Sasuke had been seeking the first time around, although Sasuke wasn't sure whether Shisui had been overruled or had been the one doing the convincing. He acted petulant enough for the former to be the case, but there was no hint of reluctance to his steps.

"Are you just going to stand there and watch me?" Sasuke asked after the first hour, when Shisui just leaned on the doorframe and pretended not to pay attention to him.

"How can I watch you with no eyes?" Shisui said, tone gently mocking, and Sasuke stuck his tongue out at the other man before turning back to his search. Whether or not Shisui was set to guard him was irrelevant in any case; Sasuke had more important things to worry about.

Four days took Sasuke through the remaining records, which again had nothing useful to say. He relearned the same things he'd learned in his own world, he became intimately acquainted with the Uchiha plans to overthrow Tobi (which he would have pointed out as doomed to failure from the start had he been there), and he learned absolutely nothing about how, say, the Kamui shifted things to another dimension.

"Fucking useless," he growled, coming out of the latest volume to see that someone had lit lamps around the room. There was no one else there except Shisui. Sasuke looked at him with narrowed eyes, but Shisui was still pretending not to pay attention, and it didn't look as though he'd had anything to do with the lamps. Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Useless?" Shisui said, imbuing the two syllables with twelve different shades of meaning, none of them flattering.

"They're your damn records, don't sound so happy," Sasuke shot back, and went to find the next volume. There was no next volume. "How does it fucking work?" he snarled, staring at the end of the shelf.

"You'd have to ask Madara," Shisui said, and Sasuke manfully did not break the table in two.

"At least my clan didn't waste its potential plotting failed uprisings," he said spitefully, and climbed out of the room through the vent just to be obnoxious.

"Not that way!" Shisui said, and Sasuke dropped an unexpected fifteen feet farther than the floor should have been. He landed lightly, though, drawing on years of practice. The new room was pitch black, and he could hear his breath echoing off walls no more than six or seven feet in any direction. He stood carefully, noting the unevenness of the ground next to his feet, and nearly smashed his head on the ceiling well before reaching his full height.

A little further exploration showed him that he was standing on top of something else, and then Shisui came running with a light. The room around him snapped into view as the first edges of the light flickered through the doorway, and Sasuke understood that he was standing in a crypt. There was a single door in the circular room, low to the ground, and the hole in the ceiling through which he'd fallen. As Sasuke looked up, a stone seal slid into place across the hole, locking it tightly. He frowned, and looked down instead. He was standing on what was clearly a tomb, despite its circular shape, and he'd narrowly avoided landing on the stone body carved in the lid. It didn't have a face he recognized, and it was lying foot-to-foot with another, taller figure with its face in shadow. The two men – boys, really, from the size – bisected the tomb's lid, and he'd landed just to one side of where the feet touched.

"Get off of that," Shisui said, crouched outside the door, "and come over here. Right now."

Sasuke blinked, but it wasn't command in Shisui's voice, or anger. The sheer unadulterated terror in the other man prompted his feet off the crypt and across the floor. That, and the vague wisps of chakra rising out from under the tomb's lid. Sasuke ducked underneath the extremely low lintel and out into the dark hallway. Shisui slammed the door behind him, and Sasuke turned his head just in time to see his foot barely clear both a wisp of the chakra and the heavy door. The chakra wisp did not clear the door. Sasuke blinked.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Couldn't you feel it?" Shisui asked, and Sasuke shook his head before remembering that Shisui couldn't see him. "So cold," Shisui said, with an inflection that made it clear he was talking about the chakra Sasuke had apparently narrowly escaped, and now Shisui was shivering hard enough that the light dropped out of his hands. Sasuke caught it and pulled Shisui away from the door.

"Will that hold it back?" he said, almost conversationally. The chakra hadn't felt particularly cold; it had been almost familiar, but it would, as it was apparently an Uchiha. Or a former Uchiha.

"Away from the door," Shisui said, teeth chattering, and now Sasuke was supporting at least half his weight.

"Fuck, okay, let's go, then," Sasuke said, deducing that distance would probably reduce the reaction and also reduce the chances of whatever was _in_ the room getting _out_. Not that it made him nervous, but it would most likely put a crimp in his information gathering efforts.

Since Shisui was walking almost normally by the time they made it up to ground level, barely leaning on Sasuke at all, really, and Sasuke didn't feel an explosion of odd chakra anywhere, he figured his deductions had been correct. "What was that?" he asked, when they had gotten outside and cold fresh air was blowing against his face.

"It was," Shisui said. "It was, and now it is."

"That's not an answer," Sasuke pointed out, and Shisui pushed him away. Caught by surprise, Sasuke stumbled and they both went down. Shisui landed on top of him, surprisingly heavy, and knocked the air right out of his chest. By the time Sasuke got his breath back, Shisui was gone. One of the younger cousins was standing over Sasuke; an Academy student, by the looks and movement. "What do you want?" Sasuke asked as soon as he could talk.

"I am to escort you to the gates," the child said. "And back inside tomorrow, if you wish to return."

"You can tell Yashiro that while I appreciate access to the Uchiha clan information, I will not require further access at this time," Sasuke said, using the most formal language possible to convey his lack of appreciation for both the lack of useful information (probably not Yashiro's fault) and the highly disturbing underground chamber (possibly Yashiro's fault, but more likely his father's).

"I understand," said the child, inclining his (her? Sasuke couldn't tell) head gravely. Whatever the child's gender, it was no older than twelve, and yet both eyes had been removed. Sasuke looked at the empty sockets for a moment, and then left the Uchiha compound by the front gate.

Four days wasn't enough time without further manufactured incidents for enough of a grip to hypnotize Neji with the subtlety that Sasuke wanted, so he went to the Leaf public records rather than moving immediately in that direction. The study was less intense than his scrutiny of the Uchiha records had been (he actually went back to Naruto's to sleep), and over the next few days he managed to insinuate himself into Team Guy's daily morning training twice.

"You do this every day?" he said the first time, Naruto swinging in a trap above Sasuke's head.

"It's fun," Naruto said absently, wriggling out of the trap. He might as well have been naked, in the skin-tight spandex, which wasn't an unpleasant thought. Before Sasuke could properly appreciate it, Guy and Lee jogged up behind him, and it occurred to him that the same thing applied to both Lee's and Guy's bodysuits. Sasuke shuddered. That was a much less pleasant mental image.

"Yes, but every day?" he said, trying to purge his brain.

"Team bonding?" Naruto offered, which was Guy's cue to start in on the joys of youth and friendship. Neji, who had managed to avoid the trap that had caught Naruto, just stared at the three of them. Sasuke grinned and rolled his eyes just a little, projecting enough good-humored amusement to strike a balance between fondness and exasperation; for Neji to still be participating in this morning ritual, he would have to have formed fairly strong bonds with his team, and for him to be making that particular face he would have to still feel the same exasperation that Sasuke's Neji clearly exhibited in similar situations. A tiny smile crept onto Neji's face.

"He's a little intense," Neji offered.

"If by intense you mean completely insane," Tenten said, but she was smiling. Guy swept her into a full body hug at that. She squawked and squirmed free, hair disheveled and face bright red.

"I should, uh, I'll see you later," Sasuke said, and jogged back toward Naruto's before Guy got any ideas. There was only so far he was willing to go in order to play the friendly newcomer, and enduring physical contact with any member of Team Guy outside of sparring was not in those limits.

The public records gave him as much useful information as he'd expected, which was none. There were, of course, sealed records and forbidden scrolls, but those would be a last resort. He did learn quite a bit more about the history of this Hidden Leaf Village, and some of the odd parallels. The bridge to Wave Country had been named after Sakura, for example. Hyuuga Hizashi had not been caught up in a kidnapping plot, and was still alive. The Mist draft had started when Sasuke had been three.

The Fourth Ninja World War had barely been deserving of the name, although it had taken Tobi well over two years to completely subdue the known world. Sasuke confirmed what Yashiro had said; Hidden Cloud had fallen, Hidden Sand had surrendered, and Hidden Rock had been destroyed. Leaf was apparently Tobi's attempt to exact continuous revenge on his birthplace; Sasuke could almost sympathize, except that the whole drawn-out lengthy mess left a bad taste in his mouth. His Leaf deserved to drown in blood and fire and die in pain, but it deserved to die, not live some pale and shallow half-life. Besides, if they were still alive, they could still plot, and Sasuke of all people knew how resourceful the citizens of the Hidden Leaf could be. No one could plot from beyond the grave, and he wanted that kind of certainty with his revenge.

Another scroll slid towards him as he pushed one back into its place, and a few familiar names leapt off the page. Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru had been the Leaf's final strike team to handle Tobi. The few terse sentences didn't say much about how they'd gone about the task or about how they'd failed, just that they had. There was one footnote that caught Sasuke's eye, though.

Orochimaru, in addition to dying heroically in an attempt to bring down Tobi, had also apparently still carried out a number of his experiments within the Leaf walls. None of the records stated as much explicitly, but Sasuke could again read between the lines and confirm information that he already had. The Leaf Military Police Force – still made up of the Uchiha clan, at that point – had been in charge of the raid. That hadn't been part of the Uchiha records, and Sasuke wondered if it had been purged entirely or if the copies of his family were still lying to him.

Also not in the records was that there had apparently been a third Uchiha plot barely two months before, coinciding with Kakashi attempting to assassinate Tobi on his own. Again._Again_?said his inner voice, and Sasuke leafed back through a number of older records. Kakashi had made a habit out of attempting to assassinate the dictatorial overlord; the one that the Uchiha clan had used as a distraction for their third attempt (which hadn't really even gotten off the ground, because they were still alive and possessing all their limbs; Sasuke would have bet that Tobi would have started removing hands or feet for a third foiled uprising) was the sixth time Kakashi had tried to murder his former teammate.

"Well, why are _you_ still alive, then," Sasuke muttered. "And having both your eyes."

"Because I have part of him in me," Kakashi said, from far too close, and Sasuke moved to the other side of the table before taking another breath. Kakashi cocked his head to the side. "You've been coming in here for days," he added, a rising inflection at the end as if he were asking a question.

"Yes?" Sasuke said, cautiously.

"Come with me." Kakashi turned and strode out of the library. Sasuke put down the scroll and followed; he was just about ready to hypnotize Neji anyway. "He's my responsibility," Kakashi said conversationally, as they walked toward the main gate. He seemed almost jittery, and Sasuke eyed him warily.

"How is he your responsibility?" he prompted. The gate was open, and they just walked through it.

"It was my fault he was crushed beneath that rock," Kakashi said, still speaking casually. "It's his eye I have, you know." He started what would have been a flat-out run to a civilian, but was a casual jog for a Leaf ninja, and the walls vanished behind them.

Sasuke hadn't known, really. Suspecting wasn't the same as knowing. "Yes," he said anyway, keeping up without effort.

"My overconfidence that got him almost killed." Kakashi sounded almost cheerful, and it was creepy.

"Um," Sasuke said, and stopped running. Kakashi stopped with him, and Sasuke saw that his forehead protector was shoved upwards to expose both eyes.

"You need to know that I have to take responsibility. You have his eyes," Kakashi said.

"You have to realize that he's eventually going to kill you," Sasuke said, more out of a sense of inevitability than anything else. No one else was going to say it; as far as he could tell, no one else really took Sharingan Kakashi seriously any more. Even the name itself was a mocking reference. Obito had stolen the Sharingan from everyone else, after all, presumably to counter the threat the Uchiha even now still posed, but he'd let Kakashi keep his in a clear gesture of contempt.

"Doesn't matter," Kakashi said, looking at him with both eyes wide and mad. "I can put it right."

"Good lord, are you actually trying to talk to him?" came a very amused voice.

Of all the people Sasuke might have expected to come strolling out of the brush, Hidan was not one of them. He'd never met the man, but he'd been briefed years before. Hidan was immortal; the only way to neutralize him was to separate his head from his body and then keep them apart until he starved to death. None of which explained exactly why Hidan was walking up to Kakashi and draping a very familiar arm around his shoulders.

"Wait, what," Sasuke said when Kakashi actually calmed down, leaning on Hidan and closing the Sharingan eye.

"You should have told me you were having company, darling," Hidan said, and shoved a knife into Kakashi's ribs. Or he would have, except that Kakashi was still as quick as ever, and the knife ended up lodged underneath Hidan's sternum. Hidan yanked it out, an aggrieved expression on his face. Blood poured out, dark and thick, and Hidan waved the knife at Kakashi. "I liked that shirt, Kakashi, and you ruined it."

"Fuck off," Kakashi said, but he was shaking, and the seventeen (Sasuke counted) bits of weaponry he flung at Hidan from several feet away missed their targets completely.

"You're going to be completely useless today, aren't you," Hidan said, not even bothering to dodge. The flow of blood from his chest had stopped, and he gave the area a cursory rub. "Really," he said to Sasuke in a bizarrely confiding tone, "the chuunin at the gates should know better than to let him out on bad days. Could get himself killed out here." And then Hidan pulled his trademarked triple-bladed scythe from nowhere and tried to cut off Kakashi's head, laughing like a hyena.

Kakashi dodged the scythe and kicked Hidan in the ribs, breaking at least three of them. Hidan swung the scythe to his left hand, grabbed Kakashi with his right, and shoved him toward Sasuke.

"Fuck, Kakashi, I hate it when you break bones," Hidan said, sounding pained for the first time. "Seriously, who the fuck let him out today, I'll skin all of them alive."

Sasuke had absolutely no answer. "Uh," he said, yet again.

"They just keep you around for your pretty face, don't they," Hidan said sympathetically. "Okay, fine, fine, I'll let it go this time. Just for that beautiful skin of yours."

"My –" Sasuke started and then snapped his mouth shut. This was ridiculous. "I'm leaving," he said, with all the dignity he could muster. Given Kakashi clinging to his side and shaking, it wasn't much.

"Bye bye, gorgeous," Hidan said, smirking, and vanished. Or he would have vanished if Sasuke had been just about anyone else; Sasuke clearly saw exactly where he went and how he tried to hide his tracks. Not that he cared beyond knowing that Hidan was elsewhere; the lunatic was someone else's problem.

"Fuck," Sasuke said after a moment, staring down at his armful of Copy Ninja. "Just… what the fuck."

"No. Obito," Kakashi muttered against Sasuke's shoulder.

"Seriously, why are we out here?" Sasuke said. "I don't have time for this." If he hadn't been motivated to run as far and fast from this nightmare of a world as he could before, he certainly was now. It was all wrong.

The conspiracy against Sasuke's sanity continued; despite joining Naruto for training with Team Guy, he saw neither hide nor hair of Neji. Somewhat to his surprise, he found himself getting along fairly well with Tenten, and while that was fine in and of itself and certainly didn't hurt his cover, it did nothing for his last-ditch effort at getting potentially useful information.

"You seem bored," Naruto said, a couple of days into Sasuke's involuntary break.

"Little bit," Sasuke said. He'd been going over his impressions of the weird little underground chamber and its potential creepy ghosts; it had felt familiar in more ways than one, but he couldn't figure out any of them. "Why?"

Naruto shrugged. "I'm up for the draft next month; you're going to be here on your own with my dad."

"Wait, what day is it?" It occurred to Sasuke that he not only had no idea what the current day or even month was, but that he had no idea what day he'd crash-landed in this warped reflection.

"The seventh," Naruto said, looking at him as if he wasn't entirely sure Sasuke wasn't missing a marble or two.

"Of?" Sasuke prompted.

"February, seriously, how do you not know what month it is?" Naruto's fingers twitched, and Sasuke shifted defensively.

"Because nobody told me?" he said. "I've been here thirty-eight days, that's all I know."

"Oh." Naruto chewed on his bottom lip. "Draftees go out on the first every month, just so you know."

"Uh, thanks," Sasuke said, because he didn't plan on still being there at the end of the next three weeks, but Naruto seemed like he was waiting for some sort of response. "Good luck?" he ventured, because Naruto still seemed like he was waiting for something.

"Your passionate declaration of well-wishing moves my heart!" Naruto said in a passable imitation of Guy, after just too long of a pause for it to feel natural. Sasuke faked a smile and tried to escape to a training ground.

The fact that Neji was in the training ground Sasuke chose – not that he'd been looking for days now – had nothing to do with anything, as far as anyone else was concerned. Sasuke affected surprise when he got there, knowing that Neji had seen him coming, and let Neji invite him to train together. The practice rounds went well, in that no one else showed up to interrupt. This version of Neji hadn't made jounin, but Sasuke didn't think he would have been a challenge even if he had. He pretended otherwise, though, approximating Neji's level of chakra drop and physical tiring as best he could.

The practice rounds at least did Neji good; his evasion technique had visibly improved by the time the sun sank below the horizon. "I appreciate your hard work," he said, when it was too dark to really see by normal means.

"Likewise," Sasuke said, and sidled just a little closer. Eye contact worked best for the type of hypnosis he was attempting, and he knew perfectly well that Neji could see in the dark, but physical contact helped as well. He reached out and touched his bare fingers to the outside of Neji's arm. "So, um..."

"Ah," Neji said. "Sasuke, I'm flattered, but you don't quite match my preferences." His voice was ever so slightly slurred by the end of the sentence, and trailed off as if he'd forgotten exactly what he was trying to say.

"My apologies," Sasuke said smoothly, because Neji had responded exactly the way Sasuke would have guessed most likely, and left his hand exactly where it was Neji opened and closed his mouth a few more times, as if searching for words, before finally just settling into a completely open stance and staring right at Sasuke with empty eyes.

Knowing that Neji was a member of the branch family instead of the main line, Sasuke anticipated potentially needing several sessions and then perhaps access to Hinata or another member of the main family. Neji's cursed seal rendered the issue somewhat moot; he had – as far as Sasuke could tell – the access that Sasuke needed.

The simplest way to get to the Hyuga records was to transform into something inanimate and just let Neji carry him there. Holding the shape for hours on end wasn't going to be pleasant, but Sasuke had endured worse, and besides, he had chakra to spare. Neji slipped him into his weapons pouch and went about his business as if nothing had changed with the single exception of practicing the shadow clone technique after he retired for the evening.

Far later than Sasuke had hoped, he released the initial transformation and materialized in Neji's skin. He left Neji sitting cross-legged on his floor, and went purposely to his destination. Given the late hour, almost no one was out and about, for which he was glad.

Now that he was really looking at it, the Hyuuga complex made Sasuke's skin crawl. The entire Hyuuga clan had been warm and polite, as far as he had been able to tell, which wasn't quite how the Hyuuga clan members he'd met had ever acted. As if that wasn't enough, the grounds were almost viciously neat, with every leaf and twig ruthlessly pruned and every corner razor-sharp.

Gravel paths had been aggressively raked into perfect patterns, and Sasuke had learned enough from Neji to expend just enough chakra to walk on top of the loose stones without disturbing them. "Creepy bastards," he muttered under his breath, far too quietly to be overheard.

All in all, it was the most frustrating two days he had had so far; he was fairly sure he'd managed to get to everything Neji knew about, and when he encountered Hinata on the second day, he got the location of another library out of her. None of it had anything useful related to the Sharingan at all; oh, there was plenty of speculation on the Sharingan as a derivation of the Byakugan (_as if_, said his little internal voice, _you people know it was the other way around_) and data to back it up, but nothing on potential transdimensional travel. Or on the Byakugan as it might relate to a summoning or reverse summoning technique, which he was almost desperate enough to consider researching further.

When Sasuke climbed through the guest bedroom window on what he was fairly sure was February 10th, or maybe the 11th, he was exhausted and annoyed. The fact that Naruto was waiting for him with an ANBU guard did nothing for his temper, nor did the subsequent interrogation on where exactly he'd been.

"Meditating," Sasuke growled. "By the memorial."

"For three days," said the interrogator.

"I was holding a single transformation technique," Sasuke shot back, which was technically true, although he was pretty sure it was closer to two days than three. He'd been Neji for most of that time, after all.

A thorough physical exam actually supported his story of having transformed in order to meditate, which in turn led to surprise at his ability to hold a transformation for close to sixty hours without dropping dead of chakra depletion.

"While sleep deprivation is generally an effective method of torture, it's not going to work on me," Sasuke said after what had been far too long a time defending his admittedly questionable actions to a bunch of sociopaths masquerading as law-abiding ninjas, and the end result was that – long after he'd lost track of how long he'd been awake – he got the chance to sleep.

After resetting wards on every surface of the spare bedroom that he didn't think of as his, and after stripping for sleep, Sasuke heard shouting through the floorboards. It didn't carry overtones of imminent danger, though, and he debated ignoring it. Finally recognizing Minato's voice was the deciding factor; Minato could shout at whomever he wanted, Sasuke was too tired to actually care.

"You must be out of your mind!" Minato was yelling, and was he right below the spare bedroom? "Absolutely not! There is no way in hell I'm letting that nine-tailed demon anywhere near my son, much less sealing it inside of him."

"Hn," Sasuke muttered into his pillow. That was a far cry from the Fourth that he'd read about. The Fourth of his village had actually had the balls to seal the fox into his own kid, and when Naruto was an infant, no less.

"You think I would refuse to do it myself and then teach you how to do it? Get out." There was a pause, and then the sound of something shattering. "I said get out!" Sasuke was fairly sure he heard the door slam after that.

The conversation was still hovering in the back of his mind when he woke, and the only excuse he had for the words he blurted out was the fact that he recognized Naruto's face before he was completely awake. "The Fourth isn't going to seal the demon fox in you this time," he said muzzily, and then his brain finally cleared.

Naruto blinked at him from far too close. "The Fourth Hokage? But there have only been three."

"What are you doing?" Sasuke pushed at him irritably, and Naruto fell nimbly from the side of the bed to land on his feet.

"You've been asleep for nearly eighteen hours," Naruto said, entirely too cheerfully. "I was debating on whether or not to haul you over to Leaf hospital or just treat you for chakra depletion here."

"I don't – I'm fine," Sasuke said, which was even true. "What do you want?"

"Yeah, apparently," Naruto said, ignoring the second half of the statement. "I was just making sure."

"You realize that watching me sleep is still creepy," Sasuke said, because Naruto was still _looking_ at him.

"Uh huh," said Naruto. "Get dressed."

"Why?" Sasuke said, but he rolled off the other side of the bed and picked up his pants from the floor. "I need a bath first."

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto said, and threw a pair of clean pants at him.

The only verb Sasuke could find to describe Naruto's behavior while he showered and dressed was "hovering," and it was obnoxious. "What do you want?" he asked again, although he didn't hold out much hope for getting it answered the second time either.

"Breakfast," Naruto said, and then watched him eat. Sasuke considered punching him on principle, but he was hungry. "Okay, let's go."

"Seriously, what the fuck." No part of Naruto's behavior was making Sasuke want to cooperate with him.

"I have something to show you. Well, to tell you. Sort of show. Here, look." Naruto stuck his tongue out, and Sasuke was about to hit him upside the head for childish idiocy, except that the seal inked on Naruto's tongue was clearly visible all the way to the tip..

"That's a neat trick," he said, grabbing Naruto's chin and peering at the that he could get a close enough look at it, he could see that it was a nasty and brilliant little piece of work; it was apparently used to keep a ninja from speaking about a person or thing by inducing paralysis. Orochimaru had refused to use it or anything like it, saying it lacked finesse and security both."Clumsy, but effective."

"Why aren't you surprised?" Naruto said, retracting his tongue.

"Because I've seen it before," Sasuke said patiently. "You don't cover your mouth when you yawn," he added at Naruto's suspicious look. "Although usually it's harder to see towards the front of your mouth." Briefly he considered smiling innocently, but decided it probably wouldn't do him any good.

"Okay, then," Naruto said, sounding somewhat mollified.

"Are you going to tell me why you have it?" Sasuke asked patiently, because he couldn't think of any other reason for Naruto to be showing off the seal, and because he was now fairly sure that there the Leaf was harboring some kind of secret society. Which, of course, meant more possible avenues of information extraction.

"No," Naruto said. "I can't. Literally, I can't. But I can bring you to someone who can."

"Oh, fuck me," Sasuke said. "Fine, fine, let's go."

Several minutes later, he was staring at the Third Hokage in the middle of the man's office as he smiled benignly at Sasuke."

"Of course the cursed seal was your idea," Sasuke said. He did not point out that it was like using a boulder to smash an ant.

"Of course," said the Third, almost beaming around his pipe. It had a predatory edge; Sasuke had the feeling the Third knew exactly how he felt about the tongue seal. "I need to make sure no information about the revolution gets out."

"Excuse me?" Sasuke blinked. The Leaf had seemed too beaten down for a revolution, no matter how happy the civilians looked.

"The revolution," repeated the Third. "Tea?" He handed Naruto a cup.

"Um. No. Yes. No. Thank you." The Leaf had been running around planning a revolution and he hadn't _noticed_? Sasuke took the tea, more upset about his lapse in alertness than the Leaf plotting an apparently major uprising.

"We've been _very_ discreet," Naruto said, apparently able to talk about without risking paralysis now that Sasuke had been given the appropriate information.

"Your revolution has nothing to do with the Uchiha uprisings, does it," Sasuke said, before the Third could say anything else.

"Well, no." The Third took a sip of tea and regarded him steadily.

"They're a distraction," Sasuke guessed, because he would not have – he had not – expected the Leaf to simply roll over and exist quietly under a dictator they hadn't chosen, even though this place kept turning his expectations upside down.

"Excellent," said the Third, and the smile was back.

"They have no idea they're a distraction," Sasuke said, because there was no way the Uchiha clan would consent to be the bait.

"Of course not," said the Third. "This isn't just about your family," he added.

"You're using the draft," Sasuke guessed, although he was running out of deductions.

"Yes," the Third said. "Naruto here is our best recruiter."

"You want the Fourth to put the Nine Tails back into him," Sasuke said. "You want him to be the Sacrifice again."

"There is no Fourth," said the Third. "There hasn't been a Fourth in nearly seventeen years."

"So you did strip him of the title." Sasuke took another sip of the tea. It was bitter, oversteeped, and he put the cup down. "Why doesn't he want to return the Nine Tails?"

"Technically I wasn't the Sacrifice to begin with," Naruto said. "My mother was the Sacrifice. I'm just a recruiter."

"And childbirth weakens the seal." Forgetting that the tea was awful, Sasuke reached for the cup again. "So when she got pregnant…"

"They hid the pregnancy," the Third said. "And when it could no longer be hidden, she fled rather than be forced to lose the child." He glanced over at Naruto; it wasn't a look of apology, simply acknowledgement. "They evaded us for just over a month. Tobi found them first. Of course, he was Obito then."

_16 years, 6 months, 3 weeks ago:_

Kakashi crouched on the lee side of a rather large tree and tried to shake the water out of his dripping hair without giving away his position. He'd been tracking the Fourth and his wife for weeks now; the Third had said something ridiculous about a diplomatic mission, but that was absurd. Of course it was absurd. Minato had been Kakashi's jounin teacher, he would have said something, he would have come to say goodbye.

After the end of the war, Minato always came to say goodbye.

So Kakashi had put in for leave, which had been granted, or maybe it hadn't, he hadn't waited around to find out, and he'd tried to follow his former teacher. Minato was the only one left of that team, after all, the only one besides Kakashi, anyway, and if he was in some sort of trouble, Kakashi had to help.

Obito's eye was stinging, under the tilted forehead protector. Kakashi squeezed it closed and then open, but the stinging didn't go away. Kakashi shoved the bandanna up above both eyes and rubbed at it, and the Sharingan caught traces of chakra where there shouldn't have been any.

Kakashi melted farther into cover and watched the ANBU team converging on a single location. He'd managed to avoid them while out here, although they were both searching the same general area. It looked like they'd found Minato before he had, though.

Kakashi scaled the tree, using as little chakra as possible and flung himself across the treetops toward the ANBU's destination. It was a tiny hut, cleverly disguised by virtue of being mostly underground, and Kakashi took just a second to admire Minato's ingenuity in hiding so _close_ to the village. He was nearly there when the entire thing exploded.

"No!" Kakashi shouted, and darted forward with no more attempts at concealment. Two figures stumbled out of the smoke and ash, one moving heavily, the other light on its feet. "Sensei!"

As close as Kakashi was, the ANBU reached Minato first. They were trying to separate him from Kushina, trying to drag her away. Kakashi landed just in time to see a Sharingan eye behind a spiral mask.

"You're not ANBU," he said, and suddenly the world went sideways.

The next several moments were always a little blurry in Kakashi's memory, although the Sharingan recorded them and gave the seconds back one step removed. The man in the spiral mask darted around Kakashi as if he didn't exist, his Sharingan flaring brightly into a pinwheel. Pain spiked through Kakashi's left eye, and razors ripped into his skin. he burned through the illusion, but it was too late.

The man in the spiral mask had reached Kushina.

The ANBU were no match for him, and Kakashi was too slow to stop him, and Minato was tangled in his own deathmatch because the ANBU were actively trying to kill him now, and in the midst of the rain and the dark Kakashi saw a serrated blade rip its way through Kushina's chest.

She dropped to her knees, blood pouring out her mouth, and Minato was at her side within seconds. Kakashi made it a fraction of a second later, the two of them with her in the middle, and killing intent pouring out of both of them and masks all around.

The spiral mask materialized in front of the Fourth, only to be ripped off and thrown to the ground. "I'll get what I want out of her," he snarled, and Kakashi's vision went dark around the edges because it was Obito and Obito was dead and then Obito and Kushina were gone.

"Get them back!" Minato shouted, although whether it was at the ANBU or Kakashi himself Kakashi had no idea. It didn't matter. He could see Obito's chakra trail, he could see where the teleportation had gone, but in the precious time it took to relay the information and copy the technique himself, Obito managed to flee again.

Kakashi caught up in time to see Kushina in labor and the demon fox ripping its way out of the bloody hole in her chest. Obito – no, Tobi – leashed it and then they were gone, the howling of the fox drowning out the howling of the wind.

Minato arrived just as the sounds faded into the distance, brushing past Kakashi to take his wife into his arms. She whispered, and he stood, and he grabbed Kakashi's arm to pull him down to the dying Kushina. "Protect my son," Minato said, and there was nothing in Kakashi's short life that had prepared him to extract a living infant from its doomed mother. But he did it. He did it, and Kushina didn't live to see her son's face. Kakashi left him there, far away from the fox, and raced toward the village.

The fox was a walking nightmare, terror made flesh, but Kakashi could see what seals Minato was making. He stood beside his mentor, only to be pushed away again.

"You're fucking joking!" he shouted at Minato, but the baby was what Minato wanted to protect, and Kakashi couldn't say no. He ran. He ran, and by the time he made it back the fox was gone and Minato was down, and half the village stood hissing and sputtering with flames that refused to die under the pouring rain.

Kakashi looked down at the crying boy in his arms and decided then and there that he hated him.

_Present Day_

"That was very dramatic," Sasuke said. "Were those the actual official reports?" Such a small change, to create such a different world, but Naruto hadn't been wanted in either one. The thought made something inside Sasuke twist, just a little.

"More or less," the Third said. "You've heard of the aftermath from the Uchiha clan, I presume."

_Presume nothing, he knows exactly what Yashiro said,_ said Sasuke's little internal voice. He chose not to express it out loud. "I have a timeline of events, yes," he said instead.

"Good." The Third tapped at the barrel of his pipe with one blunt fingernail before setting it down. "Tobi's strength rests on the Nine Tails and its destructive ability, but it is not the only weapon in its arsenal."

"I know about the clones," Sasuke said.

"And Pain?" the Third asked.

"And Pain." He'd seen Pain here, and Pain had destroyed the Leaf in his memory. Not that it had stuck, because Naruto had apparently talked him into reviving nearly everyone he'd killed, and that just hadn't been _fair_.

"Tobi uses the Nine Tails like the hammer it is, blunt and imprecise." The Third's fingers tapped together. "Once he has an area cowed, he sends in the army of clones. He maintains his order with the threat of the Nine Tails and the Mist ninjas."

"Then you need to leash the fox and counter Zetsu," Sasuke said. "The rest should take care of itself."

"Exactly," said the Third.

"I don't see where I come into this. I'm just trying to leave." He wasn't going to be recruited, like some idiot, to fight a war on a territory that wasn't his and that had nothing to do with him and his brother.

"The Leaf can help you do that," the Third said.

"Bullshit." Sasuke stood. "Revolution or no revolution, all of you are just a bunch of lazy whining bastards pretending to play at a war you lost years ago. There's nothing you know that could help me."

"Oh?" The Third cocked an eyebrow under his hat. "Given the right motivation, I think you'd be surprised at what can be accomplished."

"Show me first," Sasuke said, and the Third's hands flashed in a series of complicated seals. A tangle of chakra hung in the air for a very brief second before fading away to nothing, but it matched the threads of what Sasuke thought was the gate that had brought him here.

"Shit!" Sasuke swore, because without the Sharingan he couldn't possibly hope to properly remember them all, and he'd activated it too late.

"The specifics have yet to be worked out," said the Third, but he had Sasuke and he knew it, and Sasuke knew it, and Naruto probably knew it, too.

"Fine," Sasuke growled. "Sign me up for your revolution. But I get a say in how it all goes down, because the way I see it, you've had sixteen years and done nothing with them."

"I think," said the Third, "that you'll be pleasantly surprised. But," he added, when Sasuke tensed in preparation to walk away, "you will be at least partially responsible for your own deployment."

"I want a contract," Sasuke said, and the Third grinned.

Several hours and more arguing later, Sasuke had his contract; it stipulated both the length of time he would give over to this revolution (not less than an additional four months, not more than an additional twelve) and his level of autonomy (minimal for the first sixty days as he was worked into the system and his unique expertise could be evaluated). It seemed more or less fair all the way around, but most importantly it would not be negated should the Third die. Sasuke was insistent that it remain valid until he himself was either dead or back home.

"Done," said the Third, and Sasuke signed.

Signing the contract wasn't the end of it; Naruto took him out to a training field at the edge of the village where an ANBU with a blank white mask was waiting for them. Sasuke recognized the ninja by virtue of his body language as one GekkouHayate; he'd only met the man once, during the chuunin exams, but his posture was unmistakable. So was the occasional cough. He resisted the urge to say, " I know exactly who you are" out of a sense of spite and just bowed in response to Hayate's greeting instead.

"We'll be testing your skills now," Hayate said. "There's no need to test your stamina, what with your previous record."

Sasuke nodded. The training he'd done out in the open, so to speak, had focused mostly on hand-to-hand combat, and he'd deliberately avoided showing off his full range of ability.

"We'll start with ninja techniques," Hayate said, and Sasuke resigned himself to the process. His ability to perform hand to hand combat was tested, as well as his ability to create and break illusions, and then Hayate tested his speed. At the end of the test, Sasuke feigned tiredness he didn't feel and carefully kept his chakra damped to match. Hayate wasn't even breathing hard around his occasional cough, showing a surprising amount of stamina despite his fluctuating chakra levels.

"Well done," Hayate said after Sasuke's fifth speed test.

"Thank you," Sasuke said out of force of habit; Hayate reminded him of who he'd been at the age of twelve, when he'd grudgingly paid at least lip service to the social standards of courtesy. Hayate inclined his head slightly and then vanished.

"You're faster than that," Naruto said, and Sasuke waved a hand at him, still pretending to be more winded than he was. "Come on."

Inexplicably, before the tongue seal – and Sasuke would have done that part before doing anything else, simply for reasons of _making sure new recruits couldn't talk_ – came a weird sort of welcoming party. Apparently Sasuke's induction into the revolution was greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of Team Guy. Sasuke had noticed the tongue seals on all of them and wasn't exactly surprised, but no one actually mentioned the revolution itself, and the welcoming party was more or less disguised as a training session.

"Welcome, and we're glad you're settling in," Tenten said, and gave him a set of standard-issue blacks.

"Uh, thanks," Sasuke said. It was his first set of clothing without the Uchiha fanboy symbol on the back and sleeves; he was surprised by how glad he was not to see his clan symbol.

Neji came next; he gave Sasuke a short sword. Considering that Sasuke had been unable to completely conceal his affinity for the weapon during the team training sessions, he was almost moved. It was perfectly balanced, and he nodded his thanks. Lee gave him a navy blue spandex bodysuit with the ubiquitous orange legwarmers, and Sasuke was spared having to respond by Neji interrupting to apologize that he'd forgotten Sasuke's gift.

"You didn't forget," Sasuke said. "It's right here."

Neji's face didn't change expression at all, but he paled and stepped back. Naruto glanced worriedly at his teammate, but Guy got there first, and Naruto proceeded to try to distract Sasuke with food. Sasuke could still hear Guy arguing with Neji, though, about peculiar behavior and failing to remember things, and Neji insisting that he was perfectly fine.

_Congratulations, you broke him,_ said Sasuke's internal voice. _You and the Sharingan._ Sasuke ignored the voice; he was pretty sure Neji would recover eventually.

"No, I'm up," Neji said, and shoved his way past Naruto to face Sasuke. "Three point match. Hand to hand combat only."

"Sharingan and Byakugan?" Sasuke asked, and Neji replied in the negative. "On your mark, then, Guy-sensei."

Despite Neji's insistences, he was moving both slowly and erratically, and it took most of Sasuke's skill to avoid severely injuring his teammate-by-proxy. His luck ran out when Neji stumbled after a simple two-strike combination, and Sasuke couldn't pull his blow quickly enough. His foot struck the side of Neji's head, and Neji dropped.

"Shit," Sasuke breathed, and knelt down beside the other boy with the Sharingan activated. Neji's chakra was all over the place, wavering erratically. "Neji, can you hear me?"

Neji groaned, and for half a second it looked as though his chakra had stabilized. Sasuke blinked, and Neji's chakra stopped flickering and faded to almost nothing.

"I don't – I didn't –" he started.

"I'll take him." Guy gathered Neji carefully in his arms and vanished, with Lee and Naruto following. Tenten remained behind, her hand on Sasuke's shoulder.

"It wasn't your fault," she said.

_Of course,_ Sasuke thought bitterly, _she has no way of knowing that it is._ He hadn't meant to actually harm Neji, but when it came down to it, his need to go home superseded the temporary health of someone he wasn't sure actually existed. The tight feeling in his chest refused to ease, though, and Tenten patted him on the shoulder again.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" she asked, and accompanied him to get his speech sealed to the revolution.

His first mission came three days later, after more paperwork than he'd imagined possible, and after he'd slept off the effects of having a cursed seal inked onto his tongue. It had very nearly gone wrong, something in it interacting with the remnants of Orochimaru's cursed seal, and Sasuke wasn't entirely sure that the Leaf still knew how to handle its own seal work. He was still alive, though, which had to count for something; Neji was still comatose.

"They want me to do what?" he asked, brushing his hair out of his eyes; it was getting longer than he liked, but it was too much of a hassle to cut it. "And why are you the one telling me?"

Naruto shrugged. "I'm still your contact."

Sasuke stared at him. "You're telling me half this damn village is involved in a mass conspiracy, but you're the only one I'm allowed to talk to about it. Because you're my contact."

"Yes!" Naruto said. Somehow he gave the impression of offering praise to a not particularly bright student who had just managed to finally, solidly grasp a basic concept.

"You people are all insane." The stray thought that it was, of course, entirely possible that Sasuke was the one who was insane popped up again. It was possible that his mind had just snapped when Itachi had died again, when Orochimaru had returned, when they'd gone to finally wreak havoc and destruction in the name of revenge. But if he had descended into madness, or if his surroundings were no more than an elaborate illusion, he couldn't tell. He hadn't been able to see anything underneath the surface over the past two months, and he hadn't been able to figure out a way to get back on his own. Which was, of course, why he was participating in this revolution in the first place.

"Well?" Naruto said, impatiently, and Sasuke realized with a start that he hadn't heard a word the other had said.

"Well what?" he said.

"Are you coming?" Naruto was all but vibrating in his eagerness to get Sasuke out of the house and off on his first mission for the revolution.

"Fine," Sasuke muttered, and pulled on his jacket. The identity he'd been given – really, the amount of bureaucracy was ridiculous – was an Academy student; because of his advanced age, he was eligible to perform D Rank village missions. His status as a student, however, protected him from the draft.

"You didn't hear a word I said," Naruto complained, chivvying Sasuke out the door. He took a deep breath, and started speaking. "Okay. the top. You've got a D Rank, okay, which went through Mist like everything else. You're going to accompany the supplier Terada back to her village, in case of trouble on the road. There shouldn't be any trouble on the road, but occasionally there is. When you reach Terada's village, you'll meet your contact. You'll be able to identify him through the mark on the paper that you're going to get in a minute, which should be burned as soon as you read it. He'll pass on verbal information to you. You'll pass on information to him, that's the other paper, don't open it or it will explode. Then you come back. Make sure you have your identification with you. If you have any other questions, your partner will answer them."

Sasuke wasn't sure, but he thought Naruto had run through the entire speech in a single breath. He blinked once, and then the last sentence registered. "What do you mean, partner?"

"You're not going alone, you're technically an Academy student." Naruto caught sight of someone in the crowd and waved boisterously. "You've got a temporary instructor, just back from Hidden Mist."

"You're sending me with a Mist jounin?" Of course they didn't trust him, not yet; someone had to keep an eye on him, but a Mist ninja seemed counterintuitive.

"Uh, not exactly. He's from Leaf, he was drafted. I told you how that works. Hey, _Sai_!" Naruto shouted the name, triggering a flood of memory.

_His door creaked open, something cold and heavy burrowing up his back. "Who's there?" Sasuke asked, voice perfectly even despite having been so rudely woken. _

"_Ah, you caught me," said the intruder. "But I think I have the upper hand." It was the obnoxious Leaf ninja that Orochimaru had flung at him earlier in the day._

"_What do you want?" Sasuke said, not bothering to sit up or even turn over. The kid wasn't worth the trouble._

"_I want to take you back to the Leaf!" said the kid. "I was supposed to kill you, but I'd rather protect that bond with you that he is trying so hard to mend."_

_Naruto. It always came back to that obnoxious loudmouthed arrogant idiot, trying to get in the way of Sasuke's revenge. "You woke me up," he growled slowly, "to talk about bonds?"_

"You," Sasuke said, seeing the vaguely familiar pale face. Naruto was wrapped around the other boy in a full-body hug, but Sai was looking at him curiously over Naruto's shoulder. "You!"

The same fake smile he'd seen when Sai had followed Orochimaru inside crinkled Sai's eyes. "Me, what?" he said disingenuously, one arm still returning Naruto's hug.

"You asshole!" Sasuke said. "Bonds, my ass."

Sai's expression faded into confusion, and he let go of Naruto. He stepped back, keeping Naruto between Sasuke and himself. "Uh," he said. "This wasn't in any of the books." His face brightened. "Oh! Is he trying to –"

"No," Naruto said hastily, waving both arms. "No, he is not."

"If he's anything like the one I know, he's an insufferable prick," Sasuke said, and Sai's face fell.

"What did I do wrong?" he asked, moving around Naruto toward Sasuke. He was wearing the same odd cropped shirt over loose pants that Sasuke had seen in Orochimaru's lair. _What the hell_, the Orochimaru-sounding voice in the back of Sasuke's brain supplied,_you'd think he would have different clothes, because everyone else does_. The chill wind blowing through the town wasn't helping, either; it was cold even in a jacket, and Sai had skin bared to the elements. Sasuke filed the observation away for later, and looked at the other oddity Sai was currently sporting.

Sai's right arm was rigidly immobilized; the cast was held in a sling and anchored to another set of bandages wound tightly around his ribs. A cut on the same side of his face, just above his jaw, was carefully taped shut.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Naruto said, and glared at Sasuke.

Sasuke ignored Naruto. "Nice to meet you," he said roughly to Sai, and a small amount of the tension in Sai's face eased.

"It's nice to meet you as well," he said politely. "Please call me Sai."

"Sasuke," Sasuke said. "Wait, we're leaving now?"

Naruto thrust a backpack at him. "Yes. Now. This is what happens when you don't pay attention. Remember, don't use the Sharingan. At any reason."

Sasuke reminded himself that this was not the Naruto he knew and also that he wasn't going to be able to get home if he murdered Naruto right here, and grabbed the pack out of Naruto's hands. Besides, he agreed with the need to keep the Sharingan hidden; it would give him the element of surprise against Obito, and also it meant that Obito wouldn't show up trying to collect his eyes. _To be fair_, said the Orochimaru voice in his head, _they're not technically your eyes._ Sasuke ignored the voice, although it seemed to be getting louder every time he heard it.

Naruto produced a jacket out of somewhere else and tossed it at Sai. "You forgot this," he said. "Also I'm late and Shizune is going to kill me. Terada will meet you at the gate. Take care, Sai. You too, Sasuke."

"See you soon," Sai said, draping the jacket over his shoulders like a cape, and Naruto grinned before vanishing into the crowd. "Shall we?" he added, still polite and smiling the clearly false smile.

Sasuke stifled a sigh. Murdering Sai for no reason other than that he was annoying wouldn't help him toward his goals either. "Yes," he said shortly, and followed Sai to the gate.

Terada turned out to be a wizened old woman who had more stamina than Sai and was faster than any civilian had the right to be. She walked with a knobbly stick, although as far as Sasuke could tell, she used it mainly to smack both of them in the shins if they weren't polite enough.

Between Terada's walking stick and Sai's maddening habit of pausing every time Sasuke said something new, the five days it would take them to reach Terada's village suddenly seemed far too long. Matters were not helped by the disturbing cheeriness of literally every other person they saw on the roads or in small villages between the Leaf and their destination; it was the same mechanical cheerfulness Sasuke had noted in Leaf civilians, and the only word he could find to properly describe it was "creepy." Each encounter just made him want to move on that much faster.

"He's going to be useless if we actually run into anything dangerous," Terada said on the third evening. It was the only campsite they would be making on the trip; the rest of the nights had been or would be spent within various small village boundaries. Sasuke was in the process of adding another log to the fire, and he glanced over at Terada's comment.

"He's very skilled," he said. At the moment, Sai was asleep sitting up, the remnants of dinner still in limp hands. Sasuke collected the cup, stacking it with his own, and threw the end of the unpalatable ration bar into the fire. "Very skilled," he said again, at Terada's cocked eyebrow. Just to be perverse, Sasuke eased Sai to the ground and draped a blanket over him, careful of Sai's cracked ribs and broken arm.

"Of course," said Terada, and whacked him on the shins.

"What was that for?" Sasuke complained, rubbing the spot where she'd hit him.

"For letting your injured teammate pass out sitting up in this freezing cold," she said, and hobbled back to her own side of the fire. Sasuke was learning a lot about patience, mostly that he hated it. He hadn't had to put up with any of this nonsense when he'd been with Orochimaru, or after he'd killed the old snake. He wasn't, at the moment, entirely sure that his best option wouldn't be to strangle both Sai and Terada, and to hell with letting the Leaf help him cross between worlds. Instead, he woke Sai long enough to get him to crawl into an actual sleeping roll, and built the fire a little higher.

The end of the sixth day of travel saw Terada safely into the confines of her village, but instead of either following her there or immediately turning around, Sai turned down a road leading directly south. "Are you dragging me farther into this hellhole of a forest so you can murder me in my sleep?" Sasuke demanded.

Sai stared at him with his habitual pause before he said, "No?" with a vague rising inflection at the end. "Was that sarcasm?" he asked, a few seconds later. "Sometimes it's hard to tell, but the book says it's supposed to be funny."

"Book," Sasuke said. He did a lot of repeating bizarre phrases, mostly because the people here said the most fucked up things as if they were perfectly normal. "What book?" he prompted, because he wasn't sure Sai had understood the word to be a question.

"The one about interacting with people," Sai said, one more oddity in a world full of them.

"Didn't you learn how to talk to people while you were growing up?" he said.

"No," Sai replied, with absolutely no trace of mockery or sarcasm or anything that wasn't total honesty.

"Fuck me now," Sasuke muttered, burying his face in his hands. At least the bizarre pauses and stilted answers Sai had been giving him for six days made a lot more sense. The other boy had been running through the contents of his book in his head.

"Right now?" Sai said, frowning, and Sasuke actually flinched. Here he'd thought _Naruto_ had been clueless about proper social interaction.

"No. Not now. Never. Just – it's an expression. A figure of speech." This was not a conversation he wanted to have, ever. Deliberately, he picked up the pace, hoping Sai would be too busy breathing to actually answer.

Sai's goal proved to be a clearing just off the road with a small waterfall at one end. From the look of it, it had been used as a campsite before; there was a charred patch of bare ground inside a ring of stones, and a few pieces of wood were stacked under a tree.

As far as Sasuke could tell without activating the Sharingan, there was no one close enough to overhear them, nor was there any tell-tale flare of chakra from any sort of spying device. "We're meeting our contact now?" he said softly.

"Yes," Sai replied shortly. He was paler than usual and moving stiffly; Sasuke suspected that if it hadn't been for his own untested status, Sai wouldn't have been sent on a six-day trip out of the village with his injuries. "We'll stay here," Sai announced somewhat more loudly, and Sasuke took over the duties of setting up the camp. Although there was no one close enough to actually overhear them, he could feel someone watching from a distance. He couldn't quite place the chakra signature, but it was maddeningly familiar.

The fire was burning cheerfully and water for tea was close to boiling when the source of the chakra materialized next to the fire.

"Good evening," said its owner. "Quite warm, isn't it?" Sasuke looked up to see long, straight, dark hair framing a very feminine face with wide dark eyes and full lips.

"Good evening," Sai replied. "It's quite warm for the season, yes."

The newcomer stepped forward, and something about the way he moved unlocked Sasuke's memory. "It's you!" he said, barely keeping his voice down. "You're supposed to be dead!"

The newcomer – Haku, Sasuke remembered now – froze. "Excuse me?"

"You're Zabuza's –" Sasuke started, and then snapped his mouth shut. Eventually he would manage remember that things had happened differently here before blurting out his own recollection of history.

"I have to go," said Haku, and Sai was on his feet in a single fluid motion.

"I apologize for my companion," he said softly. "He's had some unusual experiences."

Haku was still slowly trying to back away, and now Sasuke could feel two more sets of chakra in the woods around them. One was clearly Juugo; part of him desperately wanted to rush off and collect the other man, because Juugo was a solid steady rock, but the rest of him knew that this wasn't _his_Juugo. The other also seemed maddeningly familiar, as if he'd felt it in a dream, but Sasuke couldn't place it. He looked from Sai to Haku, stood, and bowed his head in apology.

"He thinks he's from another world," Sai said earnestly, before Sasuke could start to offer a less insane-sounding explanation. Haku stopped moving, and narrowed his eyes.

"Another world," he repeated.

"He's the Uchiha boy," Sai said, and Sasuke bristled. Sai wasn't any older than he was.

"Ah," Haku said, and sat down next to the fire. Juugo's chakra faded away, as did the other one. Just before it vanished, Sasuke remembered where he'd felt it; a Sound ninja who'd been standing over the wooden coffin when he'd woken with the second stage of Orochimaru's cursed seal. He'd later learned that the Sound ninja's name had been Kimimaro, and he'd been a candidate to be Orochimaru's vessel. Sasuke managed not to say the name out loud this time, using the act of positioning himself next to Sai to hide his flash of recognition.

"Shall we begin?" Sai said, smiling the achingly false smile, and Haku started talking.

Most of the information imparted made no sense to Sasuke without greater context, but he listened and memorized. Context would come later. Near the end of Haku's recitation, something caught his attention.

"The other seven Sacrifices are feeding the Nine Tails," Haku said, and Sai started to lean forward. He stopped with a wince and sat up straight again.

"Feeding?" he asked.

"Seven?" Sasuke said. "Aren't there eight?" He was sure there were eight.

"Gaara of the desert," said Sai. "I will explain later." He turned back to Haku. "Feeding how?"

Haku shook his head. "We don't know. They've all been incapacitated, but the Tailed Beast chakra has been channeled into the Nine Tails. The closest we've been able to come to their location is here." He used a stick to stab at the incredibly detailed map he'd drawn in the dirt. "But as expected, it's heavily guarded."

"That…" Sai's voice trailed off, and he looked almost excited. It was the closest thing Sasuke had seen to an open expression on his face since leaving the Leaf. "That could change everything," Sai murmured, and Haku nodded.

"I believe you have something for me?" he said, and Sai handed over a small rigid envelope. Haku tucked it away somewhere and stood. "Thank you for your hospitality," he said, and he was gone. Without the Sharingan, Sasuke didn't see where he went, but that didn't matter. He could feel Haku's chakra fading into the distance.

"Obito is using the other Tailed Beasts to feed the Nine Tails." It was so close to the way Tobi had tried to recreate the Ten Tails back home, except that instead of a world-wide illusion, Obito was apparently just trying to make everyone suffer a dictatorship. "Fucking Obito." Sasuke kept his muttering under his breath, but Sai gave him a sharp look anyway.

"This explains why you people are all freaked out about the damn thing," Sasuke said, and Sai's eyes narrowed farther. Sasuke gave up. "Good night, Sai."

In theory, the trip back should have been markedly quicker than the trip out; the trip out was limited by the client's speed and stamina. However, while Sai's injuries didn't slow him down much in terms of actual ground speed, his stamina was laughable at best.

"Sit down before you fall down," Sasuke said acidly halfway through their first day running toward the Leaf after Sai tripped for the fourth time. They were barely a quarter of the way back, but there was no color in Sai's face at all.

"Um." Sai said, and slid carefully down a tree trunk to sit on his pack.

"I'm not carrying you back if you collapse," Sasuke said. There was something odd about the forest around him, but he'd been too distracted by Sai's uneven gait to really pinpoint it.

"Ah," Sai answered after a moment, breathing very evenly. "You're being humorous."

Sasuke left him to it, and went to see if he could find a nearby water source and perhaps draw out whoever was following them. It took him upwards of half an hour to find water, test it, and to fill the canteens; he was carrying all of them, since water was heavy. No one appeared out of the brush, though, and if Sasuke had had just a little less experience, he would have been lulled into a sense of false security. Sai was alert when he returned, looking a little better, but Sasuke didn't think he'd noticed their tail.

"Keep going?" he asked. Sai nodded, and they started running.

By midafternoon, it was clear that Sai's strength was flagging again, and their watcher was still with them. Sasuke stopped, waited for Sai to notice, and then jogged the quarter mile up to his teammate.

"We should keep going," Sai protested.

"Shut up. Sit down. The mission is over. You don't need to run yourself into the ground." Sasuke had walked through a patch that would have made a perfect campsite for civilians unconcerned with defensibility just a few hundred feet back, and he pushed a faintly protesting Sai towards it. "I'm going to collect firewood, sempai," he said, and Sai suddenly got it.

"Uh, okay," Sai said, and started the basics of making camp. Sasuke dropped his pack, palming a kunai up one sleeve. His short sword was fastened at his waist, as it had been since they'd left the Leaf. "Come back safely," Sai said with an empty smile, and Sasuke made himself smile back.

"Yes, sempai," he said.

As he'd expected, he was barely out of sight of the false camp when the stalker charged in to attack. Sasuke clamped down on his initial instinct to activate the Sharingan, and instead threw a fireball at the intruder.

The enemy ninja dodged the fireball, which dissipated harmlessly in the wide clearing. Sasuke took in the field from above as he sent a shadow clone ahead of him at ground level. Sai was already lying in a heap on the ground, blood soaking his jacket. Sasuke couldn't tell whether or not he was breathing. The enemy ninja circled his clone, while the clone balanced a short sword in its right hand. Sasuke didn't recognize the enemy, but his was the only non-Leaf chakra signature around for miles; the ninja was alone. He moved fluidly and gracefully, with an economy that Sasuke saw usually in jounin, and he wore no headband. His pale hair was cropped short, and he had two black studs in one ear.

Missing nin, Sasuke mouthed soundlessly. Naruto had said there were still a few. His clone tested the rogue ninja's hand-to-hand skills, leading him away from Sai's prone form and eventually dissolving in a puff of smoke.

"Cute," the rogue ninja growled, and Sasuke dropped out of the trees. Spinning an illusion without the Sharingan was tricky, but he could see its threads settle on the rogue ninja; it shifted the enemy's vision just a few centimeters to one side. Sasuke managed a long scoring hit along the rogue ninja's ribs with his short sword before the illusion shattered and he had to flip backwards awkwardly to avoid a shuriken in the neck.

"Not bad," the rogue ninja said. Sasuke kept his own mouth shut. "For a kid, anyway," the rogue ninja continued. He was rapidly forming a series of hand seals Sasuke didn't recognize, and Sasuke briefly considered using Kakashi's chidori to disrupt the sequence. He dismissed it as too distinctive, and threw a fuuma shuriken instead. The rogue ninja dodged, as Sasuke had expected. A second fuuma shuriken was in the shadow of the first – an old trick, a memory dragged upwards by the conversation with Haku – and the rogue ninja lost fingers to that one.

"You little punk!" the rogue ninja howled, clutching his injured hand. Sasuke blew another fireball at him, following in its wake with his sword drawn.

"You hurt my sempai," Sasuke said, on the off chance that anyone was listening. He didn't think so, but there was no way to be sure without the Sharingan. "You're not going to escape."

The rogue ninja did not escape, although he pulled out an impressive array of ninja techniques in an attempt to counteract Sasuke's bladework. Sasuke finally stood over the body, chest heaving, the rogue ninja's head all the way on the other side of the clearing and one of his arms lodged eight feet off the ground in a tree. "Bastard," Sasuke said, already running toward Sai.

There was less blood pooled around Sai than Sasuke had expected, and for a very brief moment he thought it was because Sai's heart was no longer beating. With a profound sense of relief, he saw that it was because the cut was shallower than it had looked. The rogue ninja's blade had apparently bounced off of one of Sai's previously unbroken ribs, and the wound was already beginning to clot. Sasuke cleaned it, carefully, and bound it. The skin around it was already warmer than it should have been, and Sasuke re-evaluated Sai's condition again; his teammate wasn't going to be able to run anywhere.

"That hurts," Sai said, and Sasuke helped him sit up.

"You okay?" he asked, more rhetorically than anything else. His sword was where he'd dropped it; Sasuke picked it up and wiped it off methodically, only slipping it back into its sheath when every bit of grime had been scrubbed off.

"Uh huh," Sai answered, pressing his left hand to the side of his head and looking around the clearing. "Hurts there, too." The beginnings of a bruise were just starting to show.

"You'll be fine," Sasuke said, trying to be reassuring.

Sai gave him a dirty look. "Proper protocol is to cover the body and mark its location," he said, carefully pronouncing each word. "And file an incident report."

"Of course it is," Sasuke muttered. He wasn't well versed in earth techniques, although he could make a hole just large enough to shove the rogue ninja's body into. Sai watched with interest as Sasuke collected the arm and the head to drop in after the rest of earrings were vibrating slightly, giving off a barely audible buzz; it got louder when Sasuke dragged all the earth back over the body at once to save time.

"Rather vicious," Sai remarked, pulling himself to his feet against the nearest tree. He wavered when stepping away from the tree, and he leaned back up against it nonchalantly. Sasuke wasn't fooled. A flicker of recognition had crossed Sai's face when he'd seen the rogue ninja's head, and he was trying to use his physical weakness as a diversion. Or maybe he wasn't; Sai was still the most socially clueless person Sasuke had ever met and might not have the self-awareness necessary to hide his reactions. "I'm surprised at you, Sasuke."

"He attacked you," Sasuke said, surprised to find an edge of truth to his words. "You're my teammate."

Sai's smile was dazzling. "The book says –"

"I don't care what the damn book says." Sasuke looked around the clearing and considered the options. If Sai knew the rogue ninja, he was likely not actually a rogue ninja. A single Mist ninja opponent meant that Obito was testing them, and Sasuke had no idea whether or not they'd passed.

The question was whether getting the information back to the Leaf as quickly as possible was more important than maintaining their cover. For most ninjas, that would have been a choice of whether to bring Sai or the information back to the village. Sasuke figured he had enough chakra to do both, if Sai cooperated.

"We're going home. Hold still." Sasuke scooped Sai into a slightly modified fireman's carry. "As still as you can," he amended, and Sai went trustingly limp. Sasuke started running.

Twenty-nine hours later, Sasuke walked through the Leaf's main gate. "Identification is in the pouch at my waist," he said to the guards, shifting Sai's weight. Sai groaned; Sasuke didn't think he was fully conscious at this point, and he hadn't wanted to stop running to check. The heat radiating off Sai had grown steadily over the past several hours, to the point where Sasuke was actually worried.

Gate passed, Sasuke made his way toward the Leaf hospital via rooftop. Naruto met him in front of the door, taking Sai off his shoulders.

"What the fuck did you do to him?" Naruto hissed, checking his friend. Sasuke hadn't been sure whether it was infection or poison, and either way he couldn't treat it.

"Not me," he said. "It was a rogue ninja. Mist."

Naruto's eyes widened at that. "Dammit." He took off down the hall, pushing Sai ahead of him and nearly running at least three people over before he was out of sight.

"The fuck," Sasuke said, and stretched out cramped muscles. Sai was heavier than he looked. Sakura appeared at his side less than a minute later, as he was trying to figure out where he was supposed to submit a report and who was supposed to get it, and wondering if he could ignore the paperwork altogether. Being part of an organization was kind of a pain in the ass.

"I'm going to test you for poison, Sasuke," she said. "This way, please."

"I wasn't marked," Sasuke told her, because that would garner less of a reaction than just telling her he was immune to poison (one of the more useful things he'd gotten from Orochimaru, it was turning out), but he followed anyway. "How's Sai?"

"You can go see him when I'm done," Sakura said, directing him to an empty room. Sasuke sat while she examined him, watching her openly. She was so very similar to the Sakura he knew.

"Well, you don't appear to have been poisoned, and your chakra reserves are steady," Sakura said after a few moments. "I'm going to tape up the cut on your back, though, and the one down your left leg."

"I don't have – " Sasuke started, but his thigh started throbbing as if on cue, followed by the side of his spine. "Oh."

Sakura smiled, cleaned the cuts, and applied the appropriate tape. "I can heal them, if you like," she offered, but Sasuke shook his head. "Well, then, Sai is this way."

It wasn't that he actually wanted to see Sai for the sake of seeing Sai, Sasuke told himself. There was paperwork and he didn't know how to do it. There was also the matter of the information that Haku had given them, and he had precisely two contacts, both of whom were currently in the same hospital room.

Sakura led him to a waiting area, most of the benches unoccupied, and walked off. She returned after only a few minutes. "It's going to be a while. Do you want to wait here, or you can come back tomorrow."

"I'll wait." Sasuke didn't want to be responsible for the information any longer than he had to be, and the quicker the revolution trusted him, the sooner he would be able to execute Obito. Sakura quirked one eyebrow up in surprise.

"I'll check on your cuts later," she said, and left him alone.

Sasuke ended up dozing lightly, crouched on one of the uncomfortable benches, waking when Naruto walked briskly toward him. "Yo, dead-last," he said, the nickname coming naturally.

"Uh huh," Naruto said. "Come on."

"I have a mission report," Sasuke started to say.

"I know," Naruto interrupted, and slid a door open. Sai was inside, propped up on a pillow, eyes half-closed.

"Hi," he said, and smiled the same brilliant smile. "I'm glad you're not dead."

"The antidote is making him a little loopy," Naruto muttered. "He'll actually be fine by tomorrow." He paused, and then added, "Well, he'll be out of commission for a while until his arm and ribs heal."

"I'm glad you're not dead either," Sasuke said seriously, and Sai's smile brightened. Sasuke wouldn't have thought it possible.

"Sasuke." Smile gone, Sai leaned forward. Naruto pushed him back, saying something about ribs and broken bones and idiot ninjas who thought they were unbreakable in a voice too low for Sasuke to properly hear.

"What?" he asked, ignoring Naruto's diatribe and edging closer to the bed.

"You're my friend now, right?" Sai blinked slowly and reached out. Not sure what Sai was going for, Sasuke was unprepared when Sai took his hand and entangled their fingers together. "That's what happens when… when…"

_Socially clueless_, Sasuke's little voice replied. "I guess I am," he lied, and let Naruto pull him towards the door.

"You're going to make a verbal report to Morino Ibiki tomorrow," Naruto said quietly. "I'll give you the forms for your paper report later, okay, fill them out, and bring them to the mission desk at noon. From there, you'll go to see Ibiki."

_This is a step on the way to revenge._ Sasuke nodded. "See you later, Sai."

"Try not to get yourself killed before then," Sai said, and Naruto buried his face in his hands.

"Sai, you don't just _say_ that, it's not polite," he said, and Sasuke slipped out of the room. For a brief moment, he'd wanted to stay, to reassure himself that his teammate wasn't in any further danger. It was an odd feeling; he thought he'd left the bonds of friendship behind long ago.

Maybe he'd told Sai the truth after all.

Or maybe, Sasuke thought later, staring at the report forms Naruto had gleefully dropped on his lap, he had just wanted to talk Sai into doing the paperwork. "This is ridiculous, you realize that, right?" he said, after what had to be the five hundredth line.

"You still have to do it," Naruto told him from the other side of the room, where he was lounging ostentatiously.

"How's Neji?" he asked, the combination of just a hint of guilt and a desperate desire to not be doing paperwork prompting the question.

"Oh, you weren't here when he woke up," Naruto said, and Sasuke glared impatiently. "He's okay. There was apparently some kind of microscopic hemorrhage in his brain; the physical damage has been repaired, but he's missing a couple weeks' worth of memories."

"That seems odd," Sasuke said. The Sharingan wasn't supposed to cause actual brain damage; he wondered if it had something to do with the brain structure related to using the Byakugan. Not that he was about to ask the question out loud.

"It was apparently spontaneous," Naruto said. "The rest of the clan has been scanned, poked, and prodded, but apparently Neji's just special." There was a tone of fond possessiveness as he spoke about his teammate, and it twisted Sasuke's stomach.

"It's good that he's okay," he said, and looked back at the form before Naruto could see the expression on his face. "Fucking paperwork," he added for good measure, when Naruto rolled to his feet and paced toward him.

"You missed one," Naruto said by way of ludicrous explanation (he couldn't have seen the paper from across the room, not even with exceptional eyesight), leaning over his shoulder and pointing. Sasuke swiped the pen along Naruto's cheek, leaving a line of ink where his Naruto had had a whisker-like scar.

"There, that looks better," he said, and drew the other two. Naruto looked at him quizzically, one side of his face familiar but the other side smooth and unscarred.

"I had marks like that when I was born," he said. "Something about the fox in my mother." There was something in his voice Sasuke couldn't identify, something that sounded more like the Naruto that Sasuke had known than this un-Sacrificed copy, and the something in his chest twisted farther.

"You had them the entire time I knew you," Sasuke said, and then snatched his hand away from Naruto's face. "I don't know why I did that," he said, and fixed his eyes on the current page while Naruto quietly moved a little farther away.

"You're still missing that one," he said after a few moments, without pointing this time.

"Uh huh," Sasuke said, and scribbled the rest of the lines without really thinking about what he was writing. Naruto watched him with an inscrutable expression for a few minutes and then slipped out of the room. Sasuke bent farther over the papers and scribbled faster.

The briefing with Ibiki the next day didn't take long; Sasuke dropped off the stack of forms, realized Naruto had given him at least six unnecessary pieces of paper when the chuunin manning the desk commended his thorough attention to detail, and followed Ibiki down the hall as if he just so happened to be going in the same direction.

Sai was already in the room when Sasuke casually slipped inside the door, fresh bandages on his ribs but the cut over his jaw mostly healed.

"Good afternoon, Sasuke," he said politely, walking stiffly toward Sasuke and reaching out with his un-injured hand. Sasuke stood still and let Sai put his hand on his forearm. "I understand you prepared the written report. Thank you."

"Sure, no problem." Sasuke edged away slightly, until Sai had to drop his hand or reach out awkwardly.

Most of the questions were directed at Sai,with Sasuke adding bits and pieces here and there. He confirmed the message Haku had passed on to both of them, and added that both Juugo and Kimimaro had been present, presumably as backup for Haku.

The part where Sasuke described the alleged rogue ninja who'd attacked them on the road back garnered Ibiki's only expression of surprise; even the report of the other Sacrifices feeding chakra into the Nine Tails garnered no more than a nod. Specifically, the surprise was a reaction to the mention of the earrings; Sasuke had noted in passing that they seemed to hum in response to chakra.

"Are you _sure_?" Ibiki asked, actually leaning forward.

"I'm sure," Sasuke said, resolutely not putting more distance between himself and Ibiki. "It was harder to see before I ripped his head off, but they were vibrating when I dropped it next to his body. The effect became more pronounced when I used an earth technique to cover it."

"Did you recognize his face?" Ibiki asked Sai.

"Yes," Sai said. "He was a Mist ninja when I saw him before."

"You didn't use the Sharingan?" Ibiki pressed, returning his attention to Sasuke.

"Of course not." Sasuke crossed his arms. "It seemed like a test," he added, because Ibiki was still giving him a very dubious look. "If it wasn't Tobi, then it was you."

"And that was when you both returned as quickly as possible." Ibiki shuffled around some paper that could not possibly have had anything relevant written on it.

"Yes," Sasuke said, when Sai just looked at him.

"Fabulous. Thank you." Sai read the dismissal into Ibiki's tone quicker than Sasuke did; he was on his feet while Sasuke was still frowning at the paper shuffling.

If Sasuke had been expecting some kind of actual reaction to a line on weakening the Nine Tails – although he told himself that he'd given up attempting to actually predict anything these people did – he was disappointed. The draft proceeded as usual, with Naruto making preparations to leave.

"So I'm leaving day after tomorrow," Naruto said, all but dragging Sasuke toward the back of the house. Sasuke had never been in that particular part of it, which was part of how he'd managed to miss Minato when he'd first moved in.

"Which leaves me with your father," Sasuke said. "Maybe I should just find somewhere else to stay for the month." Not to mention that he was starting to see Namikaze Naruto as Uzumaki Naruto, and it was stirring up all sorts of memories and emotions. "We don't really get along," he added, because Naruto was giving him an odd look.

"I know, but try to get along with him while I'm gone." Naruto rapped on an apparently random door. "Dad. Come downstairs."

There was the sound of rustling, and then Minato emerged. "Maybe tomorrow," he said, not looking at Sasuke.

"I'm leaving for the draft in two days," Naruto said. "Come downstairs."

Sasuke trailed behind the two of them, irritated and unable to say exactly why. The following night was no better; Naruto spent the majority of the evening meal telling stories from the floors of the hospital. Sasuke grunted whenever a response seemed to be indicated, not really listening until something odd caught his attention.

"Who would put a body on the ceiling?" he asked, replaying the last few seconds of the conversation mentally. Naruto had mentioned one of the few civilian corpses brought into the morgue; most civilian deaths went to a funeral home, or to the family for preparation. Only those who had died in apparently suspicious circumstances ended up being examined.

"Look, I didn't ask," Naruto said, gesturing with his chopsticks. "It was just apparently there."

"A civilian to the ceiling." Sasuke stabbed at the bits of fish remaining on his plate, not really hungry enough to want to eat them.

"Dad, tell him to believe me," Naruto said, appealing to the apparent wisdom and trustworthiness of an elder. Minato just raised an eyebrow and took another sip of tea. His fish was mostly untouched in front of him, although he'd creatively rearranged his rice to make it look like he'd actually eaten some of it.

"Someone was exaggerating," Sasuke said."Clearly." Unless someone had developed a very bizarre fetish, which was admittedly not out of the question in a ninja village.

"Whatever," Naruto said, and then apparently noticed how much Minato had avoided consuming. "Dad, eat your damn fish."

"Later," Minato said, and left without another word. He took his plate into the kitchen, where Sasuke could hear him dumping the remains of dinner into the trash before the other kitchen door swung open and shut.

"Damn," Naruto said once his father was out of earshot. "And I thought he was doing better this week. I mean, he came out here for dinner and everything. Twice."

"Right, because your stories of dead bodies glued to the ceiling makes for perfectly appropriate dinner talk," Sasuke told him, forbearing to mention that Naruto had more or less forced the issue.

"Oh, shut up," Naruto shot back, but there was no real heat to it. "We're all ninjas here. It's part of the job description."

"You ready for tomorrow?" Sasuke asked, because an odd expression had crossed Naruto's face; Minato only counted as a ninja in the most technical sense, and whether Sasuke himself counted as a Leaf ninja was a touchy subject for everyone involved.

"You know, I don't really _like_ the draft," Naruto said, which didn't really count as answering the question. "I don't volunteer for it. I don't care what that old buzzard says, I'm not that much better at recruiting than anyone else."

"Oh, sure." Sasuke snorted, briefly distracted. "Your counterpart talked Gaara out of being a psychopath. And Pain. And Zabuza. And it probably didn't end there. Last I heard, Tobi had started a war, and your counterpart was right in the middle of it. More than likely, what was supposed to be a battlefield is probably thousands of ninjas standing around awkwardly while Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Obito talk about their _feelings_ before everything comes up sunshine and puppies. And when I get back, I'm going to kill them both." He hadn't intended to say that last bit out loud.

"Sunshine and puppies, huh," Naruto said, apparently deciding to ignore Sasuke's slip of the tongue. Well, let him. He wasn't the one who needed killing.

" little ones." Sasuke rolled his eyes and started clearing dinner dishes off the table. "So how was it stuck to the ceiling?"

"How was what stuck to the ceiling?" Naruto asked, his own stack of dishes balanced somewhat precariously on one hand.

"The body," Sasuke clarified, not that they'd talked about anything else being stuck to any kind of ceiling.

"That's the funny thing. Some kind of time-released chakra technique, but nobody got a close enough look at it, so no one is sure exactly how." Naruto dumped the dishes into the sink with a loud rattle and turned around, absentmindedly chewing on one end of a chopstick. Sasuke mentally translated the word 'nobody' into 'none of the Leaf ninjas, and if they did, they're not talking.'

"Not even the Hyuugas?" The excessively creepy Hyuuga ability to see through walls should have come in useful there; Sasuke had always idly wondered what percentage of the Hyuuga clan ended up as voyeurs simply through excessive opportunity.

"Yeah, well, being _able_ to see everything doesn't mean they were actually _looking_," Naruto said. "Besides, a couple of civilians knocked the body down."

"Then how do you know it was a chakra trap?"

"Residue. The Hyuuga on that particular patrol circuit saw that much. Or maybe there's more and they're not telling the medic on call." Naruto grinned. "Glad I'm not the one that gets to dissect the body, though."

"Lucky you," Sasuke said. A few months with Orochimaru and he'd lost all sense of squeamishness for dismembering the already-dead. Killing someone was another matter, of course, which deserved to be approached with the consideration such a weighty action deserved. But once they were dead, the body was more or less fair game.

He knew better than to say that much to Namikaze Naruto, though; the people here were much more squeamish than the people he was used to. Fewer ninja villages and fewer opportunities for people to steal secrets from the dead, he supposed.

"Yeah, lucky me, I get to go off into hostile territory as a shining example of our suppressed military strength," Naruto said. "I'm incredibly lucky."

A knock sounded at the door effectively ended the conversation, and Sasuke went to answer. "Have fun in Mist," he called over his shoulder and slid the door open. "Try not to die before you get back!"

"I thought that was an impolite sentiment," Sai said, unbroken arm still raised to knock again.

"Uh, it is." Sasuke waved him inside and closed the door. "Naruto!"

"Actually, I'm here for you." Sai handed him a small card, with the words 'thank you' written in slightly lopsided script, hand lingering over Sasuke's for just a fraction of a second too long.

"Uh, thanks?" Sasuke had absolutely no idea how to respond, partly because he had no idea what scenes Sai was trying to adapt to his specific situation. Idly, he toyed with the idea of finding the author of whatever book Sai was trying to use to learn human interaction and skinning him alive for causing Sasuke this much aggravation.

"Would you join me for coffee?" Sai asked, reaching out for Sasuke's shoulder, and once again Sasuke could only blink.

"Yes?" he heard himself saying, and really, he should have better control of his tongue. Maybe he wasn't quite as recovered from the run back to the village as he'd thought he was; it had only been two days, after all, and he'd burned through quite a bit of chakra on the journey.

"Tomorrow?" Sai pressed, and Sasuke stepped back slightly. Sai dropped his hand, not even trying to make the motion seem natural.

"Wait, why?" The sudden thought that Sai was making an exceedingly clumsy attempt to hit on him crossed Sasuke's mind, and that was a complication he really did not need.

"To express my appreciation for saving my life," Sai said, and Sasuke suppressed a sigh.

"Yes, tomorrow." The sooner Sai got it out of his system, the better; it would be preferable to head whatever he was doing off at the pass via deflection than to put up a wall of refusals. Sai was conditioned to batter through opposition, and it would be easier to just redirect his energy.

"Enjoy the draft, Naruto!" Sai called, and Naruto walked into the entryway with a damp towel in one hand. "Please endeavor to come back alive."

"You've undone all of my hard work," Naruto said accusingly, looking at Sasuke and balling up the cloth in his hands. Sasuke made an adroit escape before the dishtowel could be launched in his general direction.

The following morning saw Naruto at the gate with the rest of the mist draftees – a mix of jounin, chuunin, and genin, some of whom had never seen actual combat – and Sasuke pretending he was there by coincidence. It wasn't that he had any sort of sentimental attachment to Naruto; it was just that the other boy was the most stable part of his temporary life, and besides, Sasuke owed him a certain debt of obligation for everything he'd done over the past couple of months.

"You didn't have to come say goodbye," Naruto said, shouldering his way through the small crowd to stand in front of him. "I'll be back in a month."

Sasuke looked off to the side, exuding nonchalance with every pore. "I happened to be in the area."

"Thank you," Naruto said. "Try not to argue too much with my dad."

"How can I?" Sasuke finally looked at Naruto. "He doesn't actually talk."

"Fair point," Naruto conceded, and now he was the one avoiding Sasuke's eyes. "Good, uh, don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."

"I can't do that either," Sasuke said, and paused just long enough for Naruto's forehead to wrinkle in confusion. "You're taking all the stupid with you."

"You," Naruto said. "You're an asshole." He was trying not to smile, though, and possibly blushing. The cold pre-dawn air made it hard to tell.

"Could be," Sasuke said, and then it was time for the draftees to leave. He held up one hand in a half-hearted sort of wave and then snatched it down before anyone could notice. The gates swung closed behind the draftees with a final sort of thump, and Sasuke found himself at loose ends.

The loose ends didn't last long, as he was rapidly ambushed by Guy, Lee, and Tenten – three separate ambushes, as they were all apparently worried that he would be lonely without Naruto around, and each of them had a different plan for dealing with it. Lee's plan, involving dark blue spandex, was by far the worst, but Sasuke didn't need interference from any of them.

Escaping each of the three of them in turn was distracting enough that he completely forgot about the pseudo-date with Sai, and he didn't remember until he was halfway through setting up elaborate schemes to escape Neji's potential ambush (it was coming, he just knew it; not only had he made a full recovery but Neji, for all his outward stoicism, was a member of Team Guy through and through). By that point, though, the hospital quarantine had made it a moot point.

Sunset was a bare half hour away when Neji found him in one of the training areas, and Sasuke held up a hand to forestall him. "I'm not lonely," he said without looking when he felt the other boy's chakra. "Everything is fine." That hadn't worked on Lee, but Neji was less flamboyantly melodramatic.

"Where have you been today?" Neji said, voice sounding slightly muffled. Sasuke turned to face him. He was wearing some kind of mask – not quite a full gas mask, but definitely heavier duty than a surgical face mask – and had most of his skin covered.

"What?" Sasuke blinked. Neji's reply didn't seem to match up to what he'd said at all and also didn't explain the mask.

"Where have you been today?" Neji repeated, and his chakra looked just slightly off. Sasuke quietly activated the Sharingan to see why, and Neji turned out to be a clone.

"Why are you sending a clone to talk to me?" he countered."A clone in a mask?"

"Did you see Naruto?" Neji asked, leaning forward.

"Of course I saw Naruto," Sasuke snapped. "I live with Naruto. Why wouldn't I see him?"

"You need to be tested," Neji said, and gestured for Sasuke to accompany him.

"Tested for what, exactly?" Sasuke asked, because no part of this made anything resembling sense. That was the exact moment that he remembered that he was supposed to have met Sai a good fifteen minutes previously. "Fuck," he said, because being late to the appointment was going to play merry hell with his attempts to manipulate the other boy into going away. "I have to go."

"You're not going anywhere. You need to be tested for potential plague," Neji said calmly, and Sasuke couldn't help it. He started laughing.

"You're kidding, right? You almost had me." He chuckled and started towards the coffee shop. Neji's ambush was miles ahead of any of his teammates in subtlety and distraction, but he'd made Sasuke later than he would have been. At least it was still a salvageable situation, particularly if he explained the peculiarities of Team Guy. He was fairly sure Sai would be sympathetic to said peculiarities.

"I'm not joking," Neji said, and fell into step beside Sasuke. "Did Naruto exhibit any symptoms of illness?"

"No," Sasuke said. "You're trying to play some kind of prank on me, because either Guy or Lee put you up to it, and Tenten wouldn't shut up until you agreed."

"I am not playing a prank!" Some actual raw emotion had seeped through Neji's ever-present mask of calm and was resonating through his voice, and Sasuke entertained the thought that maybe he was serious. "Did Naruto exhibit any symptoms?"

"Like what?" Sasuke asked, although he was still fairly sure Neji was pulling his leg.

"Fever, cough, redness across the face, or general fatigue," Neji rattled off.

"No, no, no, and no," Sasuke said. "At least involve Naruto in your game beforehand, if you want it to be more convincing."

"This is not a game," Neji said. "There is reason to believe that Naruto is a carrier for an extremely dangerous virus."

"Chakra manipulation makes catching most virus-based illnesses impossible," Sasuke retorted, because it was mostly true. Except in the rare cases where the chakra network itself was compromised by an infection – viral _or_ bacterial in nature – any truly contagious disease could be contained by making use of the patient's own chakra. Illness was therefore almost unheard of in a ninja village.

That one exception to that rule that Sasuke had experienced had proceeded to flip his worldview inside out, turn it upside down, and then dance on its grave was beside the point.

"It's a chakra-based virus," Neji said, and Sasuke narrowed his eyes. Even Orochimaru had refused to experiment with chakra-based viruses, although he knew of two or three. None of them was particularly pleasant, although Neji's list of symptoms matched up with the least fatal one of the bunch. "Ninjas are at particular risk; the more chakra, the worse the infection."

"You're serious." There was no shift in Neji's chakra to indicate that he was telling anything but the truth. Sasuke caught his eyes anyway, letting the Sharingan burn a little brighter. "Don't lie to me, Neji. Why are you here?"

"Because there were signs of a new strain of a chakra-based virus detected in the civilian corpse found pinned to the ceiling yesterday, and everyone who came into contact with it is a potential carrier," Neji said, and his chakra made it perfectly clear that he was not only telling the truth but that he had no idea he was essentially being forced to do so – in essence, he had never had any intention of lying. "Method of transmission has yet to be determined."

Sasuke blinked and let the Sharingan fade. "I feel fine," he said cautiously.

"Of course you do," Neji said, and picked up the pace just a little.

Sasuke spent the next 24 hours in isolation developing precisely zero signs of infectious disease while the entire village apparently went into hibernation. The hospital itself with the verified remains of Patient Zero was quarantined, Sasuke was told. Sheets of plastic had been dredged up from somewhere form a base for the chakra barrier isolating the environment as completely as possible.

The Leaf citizens suspected of being a potential secondary carrier – those who had come into contact with someone who had been around the corpse – were lodged in a nearby building that Sasuke thought might have once been some kind of warehouse. Now, it had been emptied and divided into dozens of tiny rooms. The same chakra barriers were visible to the Sharingan, although Sasuke could tell that they probably weren't sufficient to hold back a true outbreak should one of the detainees come down sick.

"If anyone in here has the stupid thing," he growled at one point, "then aren't they at risk of infecting everyone who doesn't?"

"You'll all be separated," said the medic taking his blood for testing purposes. Sasuke rolled his eyes and glared at the wall for not really being a wall; it was just another sheet of plastic holding yet more chakra. Briefly he wondered who was supplying all the chakra for the barriers.

"And this is supposed to be transmitted how?" he asked instead, because Neji hadn't known. Neji had, in fact, specifically expressed the lack of knowledge.

"We'll let you know how the test comes back," said the medic, and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"You have no idea," he said at the medic's retreating back. The medic flinched very slightly.

Sasuke's tests came back negative the next evening, which he was fairly sure could have told anyone simply by looking at himself with the Sharingan. Orochimaru had once described the effects of a chakra-based virus on the body's networks, which Sasuke had dutifully memorized in case it came in useful. He still remembered the tidbit of information, partly because he'd toyed with the idea of infecting Orochimaru. He'd come to the conclusion, somewhat regretfully, that it was too risky and besides, it wasn't like he hadn't been able to fight Orochimaru and win.

"So I can leave, right?" he said to the medic, who was leading him through a complicated maze of tunnels. They went past a number of tiny space similar to where Sasuke had waited for his test results; most of the people inside seemed fairly healthy, but there were a few who were clearly ill. One of those was the Special Jounin who'd evaluated Sasuke before he'd gotten the tongue seal. Sasuke dismissed him as most likely already dead and continued following the medic to a decontamination room.

The process for ensuring that he wouldn't be bringing any of the virus into the general population, on the off chance that it was clinging to his skin, seemed ridiculous enough that Sasuke wondered why they were doing it at all. Surely he would have shown signs; but apparently it had to be done before releasing him to the outside air. He gritted his teeth and complied with the instructions.

It was crisp and cool outside, and Sasuke took a deep relieved breath to actually see the sky above his head instead of a quarantined building. He was almost looking forward to seeing Minato, even, because it meant that he wasn't stuck being poked with needles for some virus he didn't have.

Minato, on the other hand, was apparently going to resist all of Sasuke's efforts to cohabitate peaceably; when Sasuke walked up to the Namikaze residence he found it under quarantine as well. Plastic and chakra shielded the entire structure from the surrounding buildings, and it was brightly lit from within. Shizune was just coming out of the tunnel leading into the doorway.

"What the hell?" Sasuke asked, pointing at the house. _I live here_, he didn't say.

"Namikaze Minato is showing signs of infection," Shizune said. "We can't move him."

"You're kidding. He was fine yesterday," Sasuke said. The virus shouldn't have decimated Minato quite as badly as someone with active chakra reserves, and it certainly shouldn't have manifested so quickly. The shortest incubation period Sasuke had heard of for the virus was 48 hours – Minato should just be showing the first symptoms, not be in the throes of full-blown infection.

"I don't have time to kid," Shizune said, and stepped to the side to let a medic Sasuke didn't recognize walk through the entrance. "I have too much goddamn work to do. You can't go in there. Go stay with someone else." She started to walk away, and Sasuke caught her arm.

"Is he going to be okay?" No one had answered any questions of any sort on what strain of chakra-related virus this might be. The village was clearly terrified of it, and with the level of response, it had to be something potentially fatal, but that described all of the strains Sasuke knew.

"I don't know," Shizune said. "Look, you're not his family. I can't talk to you about it." Sasuke let go of her arm and Shizune jogged off at a pace much higher than the exhaustion in her face suggested she was capable of. Sasuke crossed his arms and glared at the Namikaze residence. He didn't even have a decent set of clothes; the ones he'd been wearing had been taken for decontamination and had never been returned, which left him in gray shorts and a matching t-shirt. At least he still had his shoes.

Sasuke gave the house one more irritable look and turned to go find somewhere else to sleep when someone addressed him.

"So you never showed up for coffee." The very recognizable voice seemed to come from nowhere, but Sasuke could tell exactly where its owner was. A shadow detached itself from across the street, proving him right, and resolved into Sai.

Sasuke pointed at the house. "Quarantine," he said by way of explanation.

"You weren't in there," Sai said. "You just now came from down the street."

"No, I was in the other one. Outside the hospital." Sasuke gave the quarantined Namikaze residence one final look and started walking, not that he knew where he was going. "Something about Naruto maybe being a carrier."

"Is he all right?" Sai asked, materializing in front of Sasuke and forcing him to stop or run the other boy over.

"How should I know? I just barely left. I don't know anything. I don't even know what this stupid virus is." Sasuke stepped around Sai, not being in any kind of mood to defend not showing up for the pseudo-date.

"Where are you going?" Sai asked, either changing the subject or ignoring Sasuke's words entirely. Possibly both. It was hard to say.

"I – what?"

"I said, where are you going?" Sai repeated patiently.

"Um." He hadn't come up with a solution for that. One of the training grounds seemed like the simplest place to spend the night; it wouldn't be the first time he'd meditated until dawn, and it wasn't like he really needed the sleep that badly.

"Come home with me."

If Sasuke hadn't thought Sai was hitting on him before, he would definitely have thought so now. "Uh, look, it's not that I'm not flattered," he started. This had gone way past deflection territory and into the plains of straight refusal. He was too tired to deal with Sai's particular brand of obtuseness right now, anyway.

"Flattered?" Sai looked honestly confused.

"You're hitting on me, right?" Sasuke blinked. It was a line that sounded like it had come right out of a book; perfectly in character for Sai.

"No?" Sai still looked confused. "If you don't have a place to stay, I'd like to offer you one. You're Naruto's friend, after all."

"Where do you even live?" Sasuke asked, which Sai still didn't take as acquiescence. "Yes, thank you," he said finally. "I would appreciate a place to stay."

As it turned out, Sai lived in the temporary ANBU quarters; he apparently slept in a small room with no windows and used the communal bath and kitchen for his floor, which made for very little privacy. Sasuke didn't particularly care; a place to sleep was a place to sleep, and it wasn't like he hadn't been aware enough of his surroundings to deal with potential threats since he'd arrived in the alternate Leaf.

Whether Sasuke cared or not was a moot point by the following morning in any case; the entire village was on lockdown until the infection had been properly contained, with special permission needed for any ninja to travel the streets and curfews for the civilians.

"Due to the lower level of chakra possessed by civilian citizens –" Sai read from the notice, looking up at Sasuke punching the wall in frustration.

"I know why civilians are in lesser danger from the stupid virus," Sasuke said. "That makes no sense. They can still carry the disease."

Sai shrugged, which Sasuke interpreted as something along the lines of _I will follow instructions and not ask about them, because I don't need to think about anything, I just do what I'm told._

Three days of being trapped in a building with a bunch of paranoid ANBU later, Sasuke was almost willing to reassess his commitment to the alternate version of the Leaf and wondering if it might not be possible to figure out how to get home on his own anyway. The situation would have been distressing even without the assassins who had been in the building by chance when the city was closed down making everyone's life difficult; Sasuke was now sure that Sai was hitting on him left right and center, and it was enough to give him a constant headache.

When the summons from the Third came, Sasuke's desire to escape the ANBU barracks was great enough that he nearly literally ran; the only thing that stopped him was the fact that Sai – despite still not having healed from the broken bones he'd sustained on their trip out of the Leaf – had been summoned right along with him.

The task that the Third then proceeded to outline for Sasuke wasn't much of an improvement, either; particularly not when the clone of Sai that went with him in place of the real thing – both because the clone's bones weren't broken and because the clone wouldn't catch the chakra virus - kept looking at him and asking if he was actually all right.

"I'm fine," Sasuke snapped for the third time in an hour, edging back from the rooftop. "I do not have the damn virus. If I'd caught the stupid thing, your real body would have caught it by now too, and we'd both probably be dead."

Sai's clone looked at him with the face Sai reserved for facing down extreme stupidity. "That is literally the least reassuring thing you have ever said to me."

"Oh, shut up." Sasuke leaned over the edge of the roof, fairly sure the heavy darkness of well past sunset would conceal the movement. "Do you see anything from over there?"

"From three feet to your left?" Sai asked. Sasuke wondered if it might be possible for clones to develop personality traits different from their real bodies; this one seemed to have a flair for the sarcastic that Sai lacked.

"Yes. From three feet to my left. Do you see anything." His headache was throbbing worse than before, beating in counterpoint to his pulse. He was almost positive it had everything to do with the asininity of his current partner and nothing to do with the deliberate use of biological warfare.

"No," Sai said.

"Well, then, keep watching." Sasuke activated the Sharingan and let his mind drift slightly. He specifically had been given the sneak-around-during-quarantine assignment because someone had told the Third that he was immune to poisons and toxins, which the Third had reasoned made him less likely to catch the modified chakra virus.

"_All poisons and toxins?" the Third had asked._

"_Almost all," Sasuke had replied, because it was true. The immunity gave him an edge others didn't, one that worked best coupled with an element of surprise, but it wouldn't do him any good to be caught lying at this juncture. He would really have liked to have known who'd spilled that particular secret to the Hokage, though, since he was fairly sure he hadn't actually told anyone._

"_Are you resistant to the various agents used in biological warfare?" the Third had asked next, and Sasuke had had to ask exactly what he meant by that. The answer had been horrifying in ways that he wouldn't have considered before Orochimaru._

_Using illness to decimate an enemy village was some kind of brilliant – if one could ensure that one's own side didn't also sicken, and that was apparently the sticking point. Even aside from accidental poisoning of one's own troops, contamination of the local water supply was also problematic. He hadn't really wanted to know that the strategy that Orochimaru had decided was too risky had an actual name._

"_I'm glad you think so," the Third had said. "There is a distinct possibility that the Leaf is its victim."_

"_That makes absolutely no sense," Sasuke had replied. "We're not at war. Technically."_

_The Third had just looked at him, his expression and posture conveying something very like scorn for Sasuke's naiveté. _

"_Okay, fine, but what do you want me to do about it?" Sasuke couldn't fight an enemy he couldn't see – well, he could, technically, but only when that enemy was an actual human being, or something that had once been human. _

"_Track down whatever killed the civilian and left its corpse on the ceiling. The Leaf response must be seen to be as standard protocol for swiftly spreading illness."_

What the Third had not, of course, said was that either the information that Sasuke brought back or the death of Tobi's operative (preferably at the hands of the chakra virus) would be the main objective. The perfectly reasonable assumption Sasuke had made was that he would be working alone.

"Tell me again how I got stuck with you," Sasuke hissed to the clone, who just looked at him with worry bordering on concern. "I'm fine," Sasuke said in response to whatever it was Sai wasn't saying.

"Because I'm good at long-range combat," the clone said anyway; his instructions were to hang back and let Sasuke engage at close range while he provided support with his living drawings.

"And why couldn't you – the real you – do that while we were outside the village?"

Sai wiggled his right hand in response. "Couldn't move my fingers."The real Sai's arm was still bound in a cast, although no longer secured to Sai's also still bound ribs.

"You're here because the old buzzard doesn't trust me," Sasuke said, not loudly enough for Sai to hear. "Especially not with the identity of anyone else involved in this ridiculous rebellion."

"Sorry, what?"

"Eyes on the road." The lingering chakra trail around where the corpse had been wouldn't have been visible to anyone without the Sharingan – even the Byakugan couldn't have picked the pattern out of the surrounding chaos. Between there and the rooftop had been several more layers of lies and subterfuge, and Sasuke had sent his own set of clones to hunt down the various possibilities.

All the signs pointed to culprit having gone to ground in the building across the street – not the first interpretation of all of the actual hints he'd come across, but what lay underneath the underneath. Sasuke did have to admit that Sai's tiny little ink mice had made decent messengers, though, between the clones.

"There." The clone pointed, and Sasuke saw movement. He leapt lightly across the gap between the roofs and landed on the man's shoulders with cat-like grace.

The target had the same black metal earrings as the rogue ninja who had attacked Sasuke and Sai well outside the Leaf; Sasuke wouldn't have noticed the similarity, if he hadn't seen the very slender threads of chakra heading from the earrings to the Leaf village wards. The target turned to shake him off, and Sasuke saw an intricate network of chakra threads going from the target's earrings to his eyes and ears. A sudden thought struck him, and Sasuke gestured behind the target's head for Sai's clone to stay back. He then proceeded to lose all sense of balance and tumble gracelessly to the ground, taking the target with him.

The Sharingan was gone from Sasuke's eyes by the time the target got a look at his face. "What the fuck was that for?" the target said, shoving Sasuke away.

Sasuke deliberately entangled himself in the other man's limbs while trying to appear as boneless as possible. He groaned for good measure when the target shoved harder.

"Oh, fuck," the target said, and Sasuke grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands.

"You have to listen," he said, using chakra to force blood to his face to mimic the chakra virus's identifying blush. The target panicked, nearly ripping his shirt off in his attempts to get away from what he clearly considered to be an infected ninja. Sasuke followed him, maintaining a death grip on the shirt and listing heavily to one side as the target unwittingly pulled him to his feet. "No, I have to tell you," he said. "You can't see it."

"Get off me!" the target shouted, and the alley wasn't quite deserted enough that no lights came on in response to the shouting; a patrol team came running, most likely to investigate the curfew violation. As per the new protocol, when they saw an apparent case of infection, they set up a blockade at the mouth of the alley and radioed for medical backup.

Sasuke did not smile; it would have given him away. Instead, he pretended to pass out again, neatly trapping the target beneath his body. It wasn't quite a good enough strategy to give them either a live prisoner for interrogation or an unwitting double agent to whom to feed false information, though, because the target bit down on a suicide pill.

"Well, fuck," Sasuke said, and sat up, at which point he had to deal with the consequences of his actions. The real Sai showed up to visit him in the isolation chamber the following morning, wearing the standard suit. It did nothing to hide his face.

"You only have yourself to blame," he said. "You were the one pretending to be sick."

Sasuke did not dignify the statement with a response.

"I require a verbal report," Sai continued, head tilted to one side.

"Fuck off. You were completely useless. You give the report," Sasuke said.

"You went off script," Sai said. "There was no part of any contingency plan we discussed that involved feigning infection."

Sasuke had to admit that Sai had a point there; it wasn't like he'd gotten a chance to explain before being hauled off to the hospital for the second time in a week to be tested for chakra virus infection. "The earrings the man was wearing. They were transmitting something back through the village wards." Sasuke told him about the earrings and the chakra thread and what he'd seen. "There was also the network going through his eyes and ears – most likely everything he saw and heard was going back to whoever sent him."

Sai blinked very slowly. "And you think the rogue ninja that disrupted our first mission had the same paraphernalia?"

Sasuke nodded.

"I see." Sai's face stayed expressionless for barely a moment longer before he smiled mischievously. "In the meantime, feel better."

"I told you, I don't have the damn virus." He'd been tested the first time. It had come back negative then, and there was no reason to think that the results would be any different now. His headache was clearly caused by his environment.

"Sometimes it's asymptomatic," Sai said, and Sasuke realized that Sai was trying to be funny, or lighthearted, or something. He'd just never learned how that actually worked. Not that Sasuke had cared to learn how it worked, either, but there was something painful about watching Sai try and fail so spectacularly.

"Go home," he said, ignoring the painful little twinge in his chest.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Sai said, and vanished.

The Namikaze residence was still under quarantine when Sasuke was released the second time and told to drink more fluids and get more sleep if he wanted to keep his immune system working at peak efficiency. Sasuke ended up in Sai's tiny room again, and when he walked in the door, Sai was seated at his two-person table with two cups of steaming coffee.

"Do you take sugar?" he asked, and Sasuke just stared for a moment before it occurred to him that Sai was trying to make good on the offer of coffee after all; he had just adapted to the scenario the way it made the most sense to him, because there was something fundamental about human interaction that Sai didn't quite get.

"Black," he said, closing the door behind him. "No sugar."

Sai smiled warmly and stirred his own cup, the color of milky caramel.

"Have you ever done training for infiltration work?" Sasuke asked, sitting down and holding the cup in cold hands. "Or undercover work of any sort?" He knew that such training existed; the very basics were covered in the Academy, but the higher levels weren't undertaken until a ninja made chuunin or better.

"No, that was never my specialty. Why do you ask?" Sai took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, and added sugar.

"It might help you learn more of the intricacies of social interaction," Sasuke said. "It's good practice."

Sai's expression cleared. "Ah. That's not really something that the Leaf does any more," he said. "Chakra signatures are registered, and the work-arounds for that aren't worth the potential risk."

"Ninja chakra signatures?" Sasuke asked, frowning.

"Ninja chakra signatures upon Academy entrance, civilian chakra signatures at eighteen."

There was only one inevitable conclusion Sasuke could reach, given his cover identity as a fresh new Academy student, and he didn't like where it was leading him. He felt oddly violated, as if something important had been taken from him without his consent. "When the fuck did you people register my chakra?" he asked, taking pains to keep his voice completely level.

"Probably after the tongue seal was inscribed," Sai said, with an expression that said he was aiming for reassuring but wasn't quite sure how to get there. "It changes the signature a little if you're young enough."

"You had no right," Sasuke said. Not that he wouldn't have agreed for the sake of his cover if he had been asked, but he hadn't callous disregard for this bit of basic courtesy was indicative of how this Leaf had slowly started to sacrifice its humanity for its brand of justice. He'd known it, he'd been able to see it in a thousand tiny little details, but it hadn't seemed important until it had affected him personally.

Sasuke laughed suddenly, cutting off Sai's stammered words. This Leaf's lack of humanity _wasn't_ important, and it made no difference; he wasn't going to be here for the rest of his life, and it was the inhuman barbarity in his own Leaf that concerned him. He needed to keep his end goal in mind – returning home and exacting vengeance in Itachi's name. Equilibrium restored, he took a sip of coffee.

"No, it had to be done," he said to Sai. "There were very few ways around it, particularly without my help, and none of them had the acceptable risks."

Sai gave him a wary look and went back to his coffee. "How's your headache?" he said, in a blatant effort to change the subject.

"Fine," Sasuke said, almost surprised to find out that it actually was.

Not that the second set of days cooped up in quarantine was any better than the first; Sasuke was out of the loop and he hated not having information.

"Are we sure they're not all dead out there?" he asked several days later, although he could feel chakra patterns throughout the village perfectly well. "Maybe we should go check."

"They're still alive," Sai said. His broken bones were healing rapidly, mostly due to chakra assist. The muscles were apparently a little harder to repair, which meant that the most entertaining object in the room was Sai's physical therapy to get his fingers back into proper working order. "Wait, who's they?"

"Anyone," Sasuke said, watching Sai hold a twisted and ridiculously complex position balanced on one hand – the one attached to the broken arm – and one foot before lifting said foot and extending it outwards. "Everyone – are you sure you're not going to further damage the bones by doing that?"

He'd seen Lee training with shattered bones, and Lee had nearly never been a ninja again, after all. It was a perfectly reasonable question, and Sasuke was _bored._ He was quickly discovering that bored was his least favorite state of being, ever.

"Chakra," Sai said, voice strained, and Sasuke activated the Sharingan. Sai was reinforcing the breaks in his ribs and in his forearm and wrist with chakra, keeping the bone steady and stable while letting the muscles rebuild.

"Huh," he said, because that was a new technique for him. He was fairly sure he could do it at this point; it seemed like a matter of just redirecting internal chakra flow, and that was simple. "Is that something everyone does here?"

Sai dropped to the ground, sitting crosslegged with his back very straight. He was still channeling chakra to his ribs, and Sasuke could now tell that he'd been doing that more or less constantly since the ribs had been broken. It certainly explained his lack of stamina the month before.

"It's an ANBU technique," he said. "Specifically, you know, us." He stuck out his tongue. "Not everyone learns it, but it's very useful in the field."

"It would be." Sasuke looked a little harder at Sai's ribs, until he was fairly sure he had seen every part of the pattern flow. "Do you activate it with seals?"

Sai laughed out loud, the sound full of joy and affection. It made Sasuke vaguely uncomfortable. He stood and turned away. "Never mind," he said, aware that his voice was stiff.

"No, no, I'll show you." Sai's voice was still bubbling over with warmth and amusement, which didn't help Sasuke's sense of discomfort at all. "Here, look."

Sasuke turned back to see Sai now seated in one of the chairs, and reactivated the Sharingan.

"The technique releases like this." Sai made a series of seals and shifted his chakra flow simultaneously. The chakra supporting his ribs faded, and his heartbeat sped up slightly. "Did you copy it?" he asked, voice not quite hiding what must have been sudden pain.

"Yes." It hadn't been particularly complex, but it was rather ingenious.

"This is the activation sequence." Sai's hands flashed again, and his chakra shifted back. His breathing eased and his heart rate dropped. "Do you need to see it again?"

"I've got it," Sasuke said absently, still staring at the chakra flow. He hadn't been as interested in medicine and genetics as Orochimaru had been – he had no desire to splice other bloodline limits into his own body, for one – but as Sai had said, a self-healing technique would have fantastic field applications.

Sai blushed and went back to his coffee, avoiding Sasuke's eyes. Sasuke blinked and deactivated the Sharingan, and then realized that Sai had interpreted his gaze as exactly what he was trying to avoid. He felt his own cheeks redden, and hated himself for not being able to stop it on time.

"I, uh," he said, grabbed his coffee, and made himself as scarce as possible. The roof was still a nice place to be. Swarming with ANBU, but miles better than inside.

The funeral for the Third Hokage came four days later. The announcement came hard on the heels of the news that the quarantine had been lifted; the strain of virus was not, in fact, particularly contagious, and most of the victims were either dead or on the road to recovery. All of them had been isolated, and no new cases had been detected in the past five days.

Sasuke didn't know quite what to think. The little voice in his head, the one that kept sounding like Orochimaru, was at anything but a loss for opinion. _Obito must be fucking thrilled,_ it said, and he could all but hear it giggle; it wouldn't shut up. Sasuke was nearly ready to reach inside his skull and throttle it, but he didn't think he would have precise enough chakra control to work on his own brain. _Mission objective: observe current Leaf response to potential disaster. Mission result: death of the Hokage._

"Just shut up," Sasuke growled, stalking through the streets toward the Academy. He didn't bother looking to see if anyone else was there; he'd had enough and at this point he didn't care how crazy it might look to talk back to a voice no one else could hear. "I'm not the reason he's dead. That is not my fault. You cannot pin that one on me."

_Oh, you can hear me,_ said the voice. _Surely you realize what this means._

"It means I want you to be quiet," Sasuke hissed, and thankfully the voice subsided just as he reached the funeral service on the roof.

Team Guy closed ranks around Sasuke as soon as he reached the edge of the crowd; he didn't know whether that meant he was a stand-in for Naruto, or whether they'd adopted him by proxy, and either way it made the service that much more unbearable. They, like almost everyone else on the roof, were wearing protective gear in a fading fit of paranoia; although the virus was clearly on its way out, no one wanted to be the idiot who caught it after everything was supposed to be safe again.

The sound of laughter echoed through the back of his skull and for all Sasuke knew, the Third hadn't actually kept notes on what he knew about the doorway back to Sasuke's Leaf and he would be stuck here forever. He really didn't want to be stuck here forever.

The vast majority of the mourners gathered on the roof of the Academy had no idea how the Third had contracted the modified chakra virus; Sasuke knew, because he'd had Sai send mouse-shaped spies to watch the Namikaze residence, that the Third had gone to speak to Minato on the same day that he'd send Sasuke out to find the Mist infiltrator. The ink spy hadn't been able to get close enough to hear what the Third had needed to speak to Minato about, but the end result was apparently that Minato was stable (although not out of danger, and that meant Sasuke still hadn't been able to get get his bedroom back) and the Third Hokage was dead.

Minato himself would almost certainly survive; he was well past the contagious stage and Sasuke – with a great sense of relief – had vacated the ANBU barracks and gone back to his bedroom in the Namikaze residence. He'd avoided Minato and the medical staff who were still in and out – it made no sense to move Minato at this point, not when he was so close to recovery – not wanting, really, to talk to anyone. He barely left the bedroom until the announcement about the funeral had gone out.

The service was long; even with each individual speech remaining brief and to the point, more people speaking than not made for a great deal of time. Sasuke himself had nothing to say, but he was starting to regret his lack of knowledge regarding the structure of the revolutionary cells. Despite being able to see tongue seals on a surprisingly high percentage of the Leaf's ninja population, Sasuke had no idea how the movement was organized.

"Are you all right?" Neji whispered. Guy had gone up to give his own speech, full of adjectives and melodrama, but the rest of the team was still almost huddled protectively around Sasuke. He hadn't been quite right since he woke from the Sharingan-induced coma, but none of his teammates seemed to have noticed.

"Fine," Sasuke whispered back, trying not to sound frustrated. If the revolution derailed now, he would have that much longer to wait before he could get home. He glanced sideways at Neji. "Actually, not really," he said, trying to pitch his voice low enough that only Neji could hear it. Lee was watching Guy's speech, and Tenten was watching Lee; Sasuke activated the Sharingan and stared into Neji's eyes. "Follow me."

He led Neji off to the side, angling his body slightly towards the other boy and shaking his head at Tenten when she glanced over. She gave them a sympathetic look before turning back to the service. Sasuke kept his eyes down and the Sharingan active, looking up through his lashes. Once at the edge of the service, he leaned toward Neji and gave him his instructions.

The conversation ended with Sasuke's hand on Neji's shoulder just as Guy's speech finally came to a close and the service came more or less to an end.

Several days passed without Sasuke hearing anything from the revolution; with Naruto on the month-long mission to Mist, his only official contact was Sai. Sasuke was trying to avoid Sai, and it seemed to be working. He hadn't seen the other boy since his rather precipitous departure on hearing the news that the quarantine at the Namikaze residence had been lifted.

Not hearing anything directly didn't mean that he learned nothing; seeing the tongue seals on a number of people was less than useful. Knowing who had the seals and how they might or might not differ from their counterparts as he knew them could potentially come in handy.

Sasuke spent the time while the village appeared to be in political limbo stalking through the streets and watching the people. He kept his own profile low, through simply movements and the occasional illusion; the Sharingan was almost always active during those trips, with a barely-there illusion covering the red irises with their distinctive marks.

The Academy turned out to be a particular hotbed of information exchange; once he actually thought about it, Sasuke realized that the students were the perfect cover for passing messages back and forth, whether or not they knew they were sending information. He almost didn't catch on to arrangement, but he'd been following Umino Iruka out of a sense of almost nostalgia. The man was still teaching at the Academy, and he still had the same distinctive facial scar. He didn't move like he had the scar on his back, though, and Sasuke saw the same teacher who'd once tried to convince Naruto to steal a forbidden scroll also still teaching.

_And you don't remember his name_, said his internal voice, which was weighing in on the most ridiculous matters.

"It's Mizuki," Sasuke muttered back. "Now shut up." Iruka had one of the tongue seals, but Mizuki didn't, and Iruka was doing something rather odd. He was creasing his students' homework papers very deliberately before unfolding and refolding them into neat little squares. None of the pages got the same treatment, and some students didn't have their paper pre-crumpled at all. Sasuke wondered if it was some sort of nervous habit before he saw the students in question meeting up with their parents. The students receiving creased homework papers often – but not always – had parents or older siblings with tongue seals.

"Well, look at that," Sasuke muttered, and made himself a little more comfortable on his tree branch. "How cold-hearted to use your students like that, Iruka."

"You're the one spying on the man," said Kakashi from way too close.

Sasuke, despite not having heard him coming, did not flinch. He looked up with deliberate slowness to see Kakashi hanging upside-down by the bottoms of his feet from the tree above him. "Hello, Kakashi," he said. "What do you want?"

"I saw something that might interest you," Kakashi said, examining his fingernails with his one open eye. The Sharingan eye was hidden beneath his Leaf forehead protector; the metal plate on the front and the protective plates on the backs of his gloves had been polished enough that Sasuke could almost see his own reflection.

"What did you see?" he prompted when Kakashi failed to continue speaking. Despite the clear collection of absolute crazy, Kakashi did seem to be more or less functional, and Sasuke never turned away free information. He didn't trust it, but he wouldn't reject it.

"Your teammate," Kakashi said, clasping his hands behind his back and stretching so that only the tips of his toes still clung to the bottom of his branch.

"I don't have teammates," Sasuke said and turned away. The crazy was apparently strong today.

"My eternal rival's cute students aren't your teammates?" Kakashi said, and Sasuke realized that he was being teased.

"Which teammate?" he asked, looking back.

"The Hyuuga boy," Kakashi said. "The one who isn't right in the head."

"Like you have room to talk," Sasuke muttered. "What about Neji?"

"He's dead." Kakashi's visible eye curved into a friendly smile. "It seemed like something you should know."

Sasuke nearly fell out of the tree. "What do you mean, dead?" he asked. Neji was supposed to bring him information; he wasn't the only source of said information, not with Sasuke's summons keeping an eye on several key locations, but he was the best source.

"Exactly what I said," Kakashi said, and spread his hands wide. "He's at the Leaf hospital." He dropped lightly to Sasuke's branch and leaned in close enough to whisper through the mask. "If you want to keep pretending that you actually care about your teammates, you should go give them some moral support. It would do wonders for your image."

There was nothing that Sasuke could say to rebut that particular sentiment that wouldn't sound like an outright lie. "What the fuck," he settled on after a second too long of thinking about it. Kakashi was still smiling, but he was leaning against the tree trunk a few feet away now.

"You have to look like you care if you want them to trust you," he said. "Good work with the other kid, by the way. He'll stick with you forever."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sasuke said with all the dignity he could muster after that unnerving little conversation; were his motives that clear?

_They can't be, or you'd already be imprisoned, or exiled, or worse,_ said his internal voice, sounding worried for the first time Sasuke could remember. _What other kid was he talking about? Naruto?Sai?_

"I'm going now," Sasuke said, letting the internal voice ramble. Crazier than a bag of cats or not, he was apparently going to have to be very careful about how he acted around Kakashi.

"Good luck!" Kakashi called out, and Sasuke wondered vaguely if the man had been stalking him and if he should consider him more of a threat.

_Definitely more of a threat,_ said his internal voice. _Now look panicked about Neji._

Sasuke had nearly forgotten about Neji. He cursed and rearranged his features into what he hoped was an appropriate expression of worry; he could sense Guy, Tenten, and Lee inside the hospital, but not Neji. They were on the third floor; he tracked their chakra and swung in the open window.

"What's going on?" he asked before even hitting the floor, but the words were barely past his lips before he confirmed that Kakashi had actually been telling the truth. Neji was carefully laid out, draped in white, and utterly still. The Sharingan confirmed the lack of chakra. "What happened?" he asked again, when they just looked at him. Lee was clinging to Guy, sobbing quietly, and Guy was holding on just as tightly. Tenten stood off to the side, face pinched and white.

"Sasuke," she said, sounding surprised. "I didn't think –"

"I came as soon as I heard," he said, and repeated his question for the third time. "What happened?" An actual desire to know lent his voice the appropriate urgency; the Sharingan couldn't tell him about a chakra pattern that had ceased, and there was nothing left in Neji's body.

"He collapsed while training," Guy said, voice subdued and just _wrong._ "I brought him here as soon as it happened, but it was too late."

"It was a relapse of whatever happened last month," Tenten said, voice carefully controlled and perfectly even. She wasn't giving him any accusatory vibes, though, and her body language said simply that she was trying not to break down.

"Has his family been told?" Sasuke asked, keeping his voice gentle.

Guy nodded. "The Hyuuga representatives will claim the… the remains. I'll keep him company until then. You all should go."

"No," Lee choked out. "I'm not going anywhere."

"This wasn't your fault," Sasuke said to Guy, and the honest surprise on the man's face coupled with his almost guilty start confirmed that Sasuke had chosen the right tack. "No one could have seen this coming."

The fact that Sasuke knew exactly what had happened now meant that he had the added bonus of actually telling Guy the truth; it wasn't his fault, really, it was Sasuke's. Apparently the Sharingan had reacted worse than he'd estimated. He let the anger at being deprived of a valuable resource lend conviction to his words.

"If I had been paying more attention…" Guy murmured, but Sasuke shook his head.

"He's right," Temari said. "This isn't anyone's fault." She wrapped her arms around herself, and Sasuke put his own arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him, and Sasuke kept his muscles loose enough to feign no further stress than the death of a friend and teammate. The four of them were still standing that way when the Hyuga delegation walked in, although Lee's sobs had quieted.

For a moment, Sasuke thought HyugaHiashi was heading up the small Hyuga contingent, but the forehead protector wasn't something Sasuke had ever seen Hiashi wear. He blinked as he realized the man in front of him was the Hyuga clan head's twin brother and Neji's father.

"Hyuga Hizashi," Guy said, confirming it. "Your son –"

"Get out," Hizashi said.

"Please accept my deepest regrets and apologies," Guy said, and bowed from the waist. Lee followed suit, as did Tenten and Sasuke.

"The Hyuga clan accepts," said a feminine voice, and Sasuke saw HyugaHanabistep out from behind her uncle.

"The Hyuga clan does not accept," Hizashi growled, and Hanabi locked eyes with him. She couldn't have been more than twelve, but she stood ramrod straight in front of a man who outmatched her in every quantifiable way.

"The Hyuga clan accepts," she said again, voice hard and clear, "and extends regret that its scion was so flawed."

Hizashi turned away in disgust, and Sasuke saw that while he had the tongue seal, Hanabi did not. He filed away the tidbit for later and followed his adopted team out the door.

Neji's funeral was a much quieter affair than the Third's, partly because it was held within the Hyuga estate and partly because no one outside the Hyuga clan was permitted to attend. The latter condition was the source of at least three shouting matches that Sasuke saw between Guy and various representatives of the Hyuga clan, but it was HyugaHanabi who finally smoothed things over.

_You're going to have to watch that one,_ said Sasuke's internal voice. _What is she, twelve? She's not normal. She's dangerous._

"She's irrelevant," Sasuke told it.

_Only until she puts the pieces together and figures out that you're the reason why Neji's brain melted,_ the voice said, its overtones shifting from cautious straight into smug. _I wouldn't want to be you when that happens._

"Don't be ridiculous. You _are_ me," Sasuke said absently.

_That's what you think_, said the voice, and then it refused to speak to him again. Given that Sasuke was currently running the rooftops where anyone could see or hear him, and given that there was a limit on the eccentricities that would be tolerated even in a highly skilled ninja, Sasuke opted to stop arguing with it. He had other things on his mind; there was a delegation from mist, and it was allegedly headed by Gaara of the Desert.

Not that Gaara was currently known as "of the Desert"; as far as Sasuke could tell, if anything was attached to his name, it was "Mist." Either way, Sasuke was not part of the welcoming committee. That particular fact didn't really bother him too much, as he hadn't liked Gaara much on his world and didn't expect that the Gaara here would be much different.

What did bother Sasuke was that the funeral for the Third had been eight days before, and yet there had been no word about naming a new Hokage. The revolution was in just as much chaos as the village, with no clear chain of command for either. He knew who had been chosen as the Fifth Hokage for his Leaf, as well as who had been chosen for Sixth – both times – but none of the candidates seemed likely; Tsunade was dead, Kakashi was functionally insane, and Danzo's role in the revolution required him to be so far behind the scenes as to be invisible for all practical purposes.

Asuma had taken over most of the aspects of keeping the Leaf running smoothly; Sasuke had noted little opposition, if any, and had put it down to Asuma being the Third's only surviving ninja offspring. He was a long way from the name of Hokage, though, and Sasuke had heard him insist several times that he wanted nothing to do with the official title.

The reigning council and feudal lords of the Fire Country were all puppets installed according to Tobi's whims and desires in any case; whether the Leaf's show of independence would extend to electing their own military leader remained to be seen.

Sasuke glared moodily at the gates from on top of one of the guard towers, waiting for the delegation from Mist; it was either that or continue acting as moral support for Naruto's teammates, and he'd had all he could handle of Guy's quiet apathy. Lee was even worse.

"Gaara still lives in Sand half the year," said a voice behind him.

Sasuke, having felt Tenten coming, didn't jump. She crouched on the wall next to him, followed by Sakura and Ino. Her eyes were red, but she was composed, and Sasuke felt a flare of relief that she'd apparently found solace in other women instead of leaning on him.

_Not that she really would,_ said his internal voice.

"And?" Sasuke said, replying to both. He could see the dust in the distance, but his internal voice remained silent and so did Tenten.

"How much do you know about the Sacrifice?" Sakura asked instead, settling on his other side. Sasuke blinked at her; he hadn't so much as spoken to her in the weeks since she'd hauled him off the street, and yet, here she was. At least she wasn't blushing and stammering every time she looked at him.

"About Tailed Beasts? Probably more than you do," Sasuke said. "What, specifically, are you trying to get at?"

"Oh, not the Tailed Beasts," Sakura said. "About the Sacrifice. Gaara."

"I know of eight Sacrifices," Sasuke told her. "One of them was your loud-mouthed idiot friend."

Sakura glared at him with a very familiar expression; it was just that Sasuke had usually seen it directed at Naruto when he said something particularly rude or incredibly dumb. "That's no way to talk about your host," she said, instead of punching a hole in the wall.

"I'm not wrong on any of those counts," Sasuke said. "What _about_ the Sacrifice?"

"No one knows what happened to the other seven," Sakura began, and Sasuke had to hide a smile. He knew exactly where the other seven Sacrifices were, and how Tobi was using them, but there was no reason to share. It was interesting, though, that none of the Tailed Beasts had been left to roam free here. Besides, it was entirely possible that the seal on his tongue would act up if he tried. "…and the only one left is Gaara," Sakura continued, apparently oblivious to Sasuke's lapse of attention. "He's grown up in Mist ever since."

Sasuke thought he could guess at Tobi's motivations; either Gaara was an experiment in raising a Sacrificed child from infancy – how might the Tailed Beast affect development, both social and physical? – or he was an experiment in the efficacy of a sealed Tailed Beast over an unsealed Beast. Or maybe Tobi had just been bored.

"So why is he _here_?" he asked idly; not that he thought Sakura would have the answer, or Ino, or Tenten, but because if they started talking, he could slip away unnoticed before Ino said something about Neji. There was only so far Sasuke could milk regret for a lost resource to create genuine emotion.

"He's Tobi's representative," Ino said unexpectedly. "Allegedly, anyway," she added.

"Huh." Sasuke peered over the edge of the roof. The Leaf delegation welcoming Gaara's contingent was waiting in the open gateway, hidden from his eyes by the line of the roof. The Mist troop was splendidly visible as they walked sedately down the road, though, with Gaara at the head. He still had the giant gourd, Sasuke noticed, which more than likely held the same sand he'd seen years ago.

Both Gaara's facial expression and body language were relaxed, with none of the psychotic edge he'd displayed at the Leaf chuunin exams. He didn't seem to have the ruthlessness to him that Sasuke had seen later, either; he moved loosely, with the unconscious arrogance of someone completely untouchable.

The same pair who'd flanked him at the chuunin exam walked behind him now, the girl – Temari, if Sasuke remembered correctly – carrying her massive fan nonchalantly over one shoulder and the boy – whose name Sasuke had forgotten – strolling with one hand holding his concealed puppets to his back.

"Who's that behind him?" Tenten asked Sakura, leaning across Sasuke in the process.

"Beats me," Sakura said, and glanced at Ino.

"What, like I would know, I've never been drafted," Ino said. Sasuke glanced at her sideways; Ino didn't have a tongue seal, but Sakura did. So did Tenten.

"Lucky you," Tenten said. "I've been three times and I've never seen either of them. Ne-" She choked slightly, swallowing back words, and closed her mouth.

"His siblings," Sasuke said. "The girl is Temari. She's a long-range combat specialist. I forget the brother's name, but watch out for the bundle on his back." He smirked. "It has a nasty surprise."

"What kind of weaponry?" Tenten asked, apparently over her slip of the tongue. She'd decided to deal with Neji's death by not talking about it; Sasuke rather approved of that approach.

Sasuke looked at her for a moment, debating on whether or not sharing the information would be beneficial. He decided that it was. "He's got at least one puppet in that pack, possibly two. Controlled by chakra threads."

"How the hell do you know that?" Sakura asked.

"I'm not from around here, remember?" Sasuke said, and fell backwards off the wall to land on his feet inside the village. He'd lost what interest he'd had in the delegation – he hadn't been looking for Naruto, he told himself, surely someone would have told him about Neji already – and the continuing disorganization surrounding the lack of a Hokage might mean he could get his hands on the Third's notes about the gateway that had brought him here.

Neji hadn't been able to get to the documents before he'd collapsed, but he thought he'd found them. Sasuke now knew that the Third had most likely kept notes and where exactly they were. They were hard enough to access that he hadn't tried yet; he didn't want to tip his hand without having absolute certainty of success.

Sasuke refused to consider the possibility that Neji had been mistaken and that the Third hadn't actually _left_ any notes; the contract he'd signed had included the possibility that the old man would die, and in that case the Third would have had to have some way to pass on the information necessary to fulfill said contract. He quickened his pace, intending to cut across half the town at street level and take to the roofs only during the last few minutes.

His timing was abominable, though, because he reached the main thoroughfare just as the Mist party was walking down it, and Gaara's roving eye fell on him. Sasuke stiffened, responding automatically to the low-level killing intent rolling off Gaara in waves. It wasn't quite his chakra; Sasuke could tell that much even without the Sharingan activated. It was less clear whether the One-Tail's chakra was leaking out or whether it was so tightly entwined with Gaara's own that he couldn't use one without the other. Either way, the hostility was pure Tailed Beast. Gaara's chakra was calm, matching his bored expression perfectly.

"You." Gaara spoke imperiously, one hand rising to point an immaculately groomed finger at Sasuke. "Come here."

"Fuck off," Sasuke said, and turned to go another way.

"What the fuck are you doing?" hissed a voice in his ear, and Hayate was suddenly right beside him with one hand on his upper arm. "At least be polite if you're going to brush him off!"

Sasuke glared at the special jounin, suppressing his start of surprise at seeing the special jounin alive; the last time he'd seen him, Hayate had been flat on his back in the quarantined hospital, having been one of the first to contract the chakra virus. Inexplicably, since most of the other victims were still in quarantine, he appeared to have recovered more quickly than any other survivor.

"Well?" Gaara said from behind him, and Sasuke reluctantly turned around. Hayate moved with him, smoothly keeping one hand on the small of Sasuke's back.

"No, thank you?" Sasuke said, still not aiming for any sort of courtesy in either tone or body language.

Gaara stared at him and then started to laugh. Sasuke was about to walk away, Hayate be damned, when he noticed the tongue seal. It was the most subtle example of that type of seal Sasuke had ever seen, and he doubted anyone who hadn't spent weeks searching for similar signs would have seen it. The ink was barely visible at all, just slightly paler than Gaara's already pale pink tongue, but the pattern was unmistakable.

Gaara of the desert, representative of mass murdering psychotic Uchiha traitor and dictator Tobi, was a member of the Leaf revolution.

"I like this one," Gaara said, looking straight at Asuma, who had turned back to see what the delay was. Sasuke hadn't spoken to this Asuma, ever, and he now had the impression that Asuma didn't like him. He couldn't blame the man, not that it was a relevant emotion.

"He's something, all right," Asuma said affably, but the set of his shoulders betrayed his tension.

"What's your name?" Gaara asked, stalking closer. His chakra was blending with the One-Tail's now, until Sasuke could barely tell them apart.

"Sasuke," was the reply, made through gritted teeth. The killing intent coming off Gaara was stronger now, and it was an effort to keep the Sharingan suppressed and out of his eyes.

"Your family name," Gaara pressed, and Sasuke realized what didn't look right. Gaara's face was smooth and unmarked; there was no scar above his left eye. Before he could be caught staring, Sasuke flicked his gaze over Gaara's escort.

The black earrings apparently used to transmit information in real time were visible on several of the ninjas standing in rigid formation behind Gaara, if not on Gaara himself. Even if Sasuke hadn't seen them, he wouldn't have trusted Gaara with his clan name. Tongue seal or no. He remained silent.

"Nanashi," Asuma answered for him. "Nanashi Sasuke."

"The ninja without a name," Gaara said. "That's not a particularly clever evasion, Representative Asuma."

"He doesn't actually have a name," Asuma said, with a glare at Sasuke. "He's one of the ones who had no family left after the unification, and his clan identity was never confirmed."

"No bloodline limits manifested?" Gaara said, surprise clear in both face and voice.

"None," Asuma said, with absolutely nothing to indicate the bald-faced lie evident.

"He looks rather like an Uchiha," Gaara said. Sasuke twitched, and Gaara turned to face him. "Did I strike a nerve?"

"They're all idiots," Sasuke said. "If they were going to plot an uprising, they should have made sure they'd succeed before moving forward. Repeating the mistake not once but twice more just demonstrates their stupidity. I'd rather not be associated with it."

Gaara laughed again. "You're Naruto's roommate," he said. "He's said a lot about you."

"He talks too much," Sasuke returned.

"But he tells the truth," Gaara said, and tilted his head to the side. "I want you at the main Academy training ground in an hour. I'm curious to see if you'll pose as big a challenge as Naruto says you will."

"Oh, fuck me," Sasuke muttered, but Gaara was already moving away. There were better ways of showing off newly acquired assets than pitting them against a hostile dictator's surrogate kid in a fight that was not unlikely to result in serious injury. "Can they blame me if I kill him?" he asked Hayate.

Hayate stared at him until he was overtaken by a brief coughing fit. Healed of the chakra virus or not, his lungs were still more or less ruined; that wouldn't ever change. "You won't be able to," he said finally. "You can't possibly kill Gaara of the Sand."

Sasuke just stared right back at him, waiting for a more useful response.

"Yes, there will be severe political repercussions if you actually manage to kill the last Sacrifice during an exhibition match," Hayate said eventually. "Or if you damage him permanently," he added, although it was perfectly clear that he didn't think Sasuke could do either.

"I won't try particularly hard, then," Sasuke said.

"You're crazier than the rest of them put together, you know," Hayate told him.

"You have no room to talk," Sasuke said. "I've seen you with Kakashi." Hayate was the closest thing Kakashi apparently had to a friend, with the possible exception of Might Guy; the way they acted around each other was nothing like a former jounin teacher and the student he'd damaged for life. Instead, Hayate seemed almost protective of Kakashi. Sasuke didn't understand it; if he'd been Hayate, if Kakashi's mishandling had left him with a case of pneumonia severe enough to permanently scar his lungs, he would have wanted nothing to do with the man.

Hayate shrugged, dismissing the commentary, but when Sasuke turned to leave, he moved with him.

"Are you planning on following me?" Sasuke asked.

"Yes," Hayate replied, apparently done with actual conversation.

"You know I'm faster than you are, right?" Not only was he faster, but Sasuke was also physically stronger and had more stamina. "If I run, you're not going to be able to keep up."

"You're assuming I'd chase you," Hayate said, and now Sasuke was sure he was just trying to be irritating.

"Whatever." Sasuke was almost starting to look forward to a fight against Gaara; he'd managed to draw blood on the Sacrifice at the age of twelve, after all. The second fight he'd had against Gaara hadn't really been a fight against Gaara as much as it had been an exercise in demonstrating how not to be prepared. Either way, he was curious as to how this Gaara had developed his fighting style. He stopped walking as another thought occurred to him. "You're not expecting me to lose on purpose, are you?"

Hayate started laughing at that, choked, started coughing, and had to stop and bend double to get his breath back. Sasuke stopped to wait for him, arms crossed. "No," Hayate said finally, a trace of a smile still hovering around his mouth. "No one in their right mind would expect you to throw any kind of fight."

Sasuke wasn't sure whether or not to be insulted at that.

At the appointed hour, the Academy grounds were packed with as many spectators as they could hold and then a few more for good measure. Sasuke paced out into the middle of the arena, so familiar from so long ago, and turned slowly to look at all of them.

Gaara showed up precisely on time, jacket fluttering dramatically in the wind that wasn't there and gourd strapped to his back. He didn't smile, which was perfectly in character for what Sasuke knew of him.

"The last time you and I spoke, you tried to open my eyes to the light," Sasuke said, shoulders back and chin tilted at a deliberately arrogant angle.

"I talked to you an hour ago and that's not what I said," Gaara said, blinking in confusion.

Sasuke smirked and just stood there. Gaara was the one who wanted a fight, so he was going to let the former Sand ninja actually start it.

"You and I have never spoken before today," Gaara said, clearly growing agitated.

"I met you when I was twelve and stabbed you right through the torso," Sasuke said. "Right through your perfect defense."

"You couldn't have," Gaara snapped.

"Oh, I did," Sasuke said, letting the smirk widen into a grin.

"You crazy bastard!" The cork popped out of the gourd and ricocheted off the sides of the arena wall hard enough to leave cracks. Sasuke leaned to the side to avoid it as it barreled toward him, letting it fall more or less harmlessly to the ground.

"You're using your toy there as a weapon?" he drawled, and the sand poured out of the gourd. It was lightning fast, faster than Sasuke remembered, but it wasn't enough to catch him. He ducked and rolled to the side, letting the sand whistle through the air. An exploding tag stuck to just enough sand to fly back towards Gaara, but the resulting fireball was only dampened by more sand.

By that point, Sasuke was behind Gaara and his fist had connected with the delicate pale jaw he'd hit years before. Cracks ran up Gaara's skin – no, not skin, it was his Sand Armor – and Sasuke followed with a low kick before flipping out of the way. Gaara caught his foot and flung him toward the nearest wall.

Sasuke twisted in midair and used the wall to launch himself back toward Gaara, sending shuriken on ahead. The sand rose up to block the shuriken, but Sasuke himself had enough momentum to break through. Gaara knocked his fist aside, actually using his own hands to do so, and Sasuke skidded along the ground to bleed off the rest of his momentum.

The sand continued its relentless assault, and Sasuke bounced around it with a sense of almost exultation. He was still faster than Gaara's so-called ultimate defense, and this alternate version of the Sacrifice Sasuke had known fought differently enough to be an interesting opponent.

That Sasuke could just barely use the lowest level of Sharingan possible – because otherwise he would be giving himself away as an Uchiha in front of potential hostiles – only made the fight more fun, as did Gaara's obvious and increasing agitation. Sasuke couldn't help it; he started laughing as he leapt over yet another barrage of spiky sand.

"What's so funny?" Gaara demanded.

Sasuke didn't answer; he just flickered behind Gaara and kicked him in the kidneys. The version of Gaara that had never become Kazekage clearly didn't have the kind of experience his counterpart did, and wasn't that just wasted potential. Sasuke didn't really see him as that much of a threat, Sacrifice or no Sacrifice.

That assessment was why Sasuke was so surprised when Gaara shoved a metal blade right through his ribs; in the split second while it was sliding in, all of the little signs that Gaara had been broadcasting came together, but it was too late. Gaara had been testing Sasuke's defenses before preparing to engage in physical combat, and Sasuke had been subconsciously looking for the sphere of sand.

_Your old memories fucked you over this time_, said his internal voice. Sasuke yanked the blade out of Gaara's hand and moved out of range, the blade still plugging the puncture in his side. A tiny bit of chakra kept it where it was - holding most of his blood inside his skin and his internal organs braced until he could properly attend to the injury.

"Concede," Gaara said, and Sasuke laughed again.

"It's not even close," he said, and formed the seals to let his chakra crackle around his hand. "Meet the chidori spear." Lightning flickered out from his hand and punched through Gaara's sternum, right below the heart. Gaara froze , and the arena went completely silent. Out of the corner of his eyes, Sasuke could see Temari and her brother – Kankuro, he now remembered – vault over the railing and start running forward.

Sasuke edged forward; Gaara still hadn't moved, but now the skin around the wound was starting to ripple into scales as any semblance of sanity left his eyes. A single tail started to shimmer into existence behind him.

A current of unease went through the crowd around the stadium, and some of the more prudent spectators began an orderly, if rather swift, exodus. Temari and Kankuro still weren't quite close enough to interfere, which meant that Sasuke was still facing only one opponent. The tail grew more pronounced and Gaara's eyes closed. A sudden spray of sand whirled around the two of them, growing thicker by the moment and putting them in the eye of a miniature storm. It was blocking anyone else from reaching either of them.

"Shit." Sasuke narrowed his eyes. He'd apparently miscalculated again. In a split second he considered the short sword still in its sheath at his waist and discarded the thought; he didn't want to maim Gaara, just incapacitate him. He forced more chakra into his hand, feeding it until it morphed into the indistinct brilliant white ball of the chidori – that it was recognizable as Kakashi's signature technique be damned, since no one could see them through the sand at this point – and swung his hand toward the side of Gaara's head.

A wall of sand swung up to block his way, but the chidori broke through. It didn't have enough strength or momentum to drop Gaara where he stood, but he staggered. For a half second, Sasuke thought he might have succeeded, and then the sand hardened around his arm and started to crush his bones and muscles together.

"Fucking asshole!" Sasuke grasped for his sword in his free hand and gathered his chakra for the third time. The rest of the sand was rushing inwards to crush him, taking the shape of two giant scaled claws. Sasuke swung the chakra-infused sword toward Gaara's unprotected side. He thought he felt the blade impact just as the world went black.

One of the things Sasuke hated about this new world was how very often he kept waking up staring at strange ceilings with absolutely no idea of how he'd gotten there. He supposed that in this case, to be fair, he wasn't looking directly at what he thought was a hospital ceiling; Sai's very worried face was in the way.

Sasuke blinked. He'd been deliberately avoiding Sai, and he was fairly sure that Sai had also been avoiding him, or it would have been much harder to not run into him accidentally. If he hadn't known better, he would have said Sai wasn't even in the village. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Please don't ever do that again," Sai said, and leaned forward. "You… you almost…"

Despite the fog that had its claws sunk deep into his brain, Sasuke had a very good idea of what was coming, but he had no escape. There was literally nowhere to go. "Sai, get off me-" he managed before Sai pressed his lips to Sasuke's. Speaking became markedly difficult, and Sasuke's chakra reserves were low enough that he was having trouble physically pushing Sai away. The stitches he could now feel in his side as some of the mental fog burned off weren't helping either; they were pulling almost hard enough to break before Sai moved back, although there was no actual pain.

"Am I mistaken?" Sai asked in a tone blended of curiosity and disappointment, but absolutely no shame.

"Mistaken about what, exactly?" Sasuke asked carefully, because making assumptions around what Sai thought was reasonable and self-evident was a very good method of creating pervasive and long-running misunderstandings, and also because he still had no idea what he'd done to end up in the hospital with stiches all the way down his side and his right arm immobilized.

"That you feel the same way about me that I do about you," Sai said, and Sasuke lost the tenuous hope that Sai had just latched onto something and misinterpreted the proper way to greet a teammate he'd apparently thought was dead.

"I…" Sasuke started, because he'd failed. He'd used Sai's attraction as a tool and it had backfired dangerously. Somehow he'd started to actually want whatever this was, this thing that he and Sai had been dancing around. He wanted and it was dangerous. Desire led to a weakening of purpose. Affection was just another path for exploitation. He wouldn't be used the way he'd tried to use Sai, the way he'd used Neji. "I can't. I can't do this."

Everything here was wrong, it was twisting him up inside and tainting the purity of his single-minded focus. He couldn't afford distractions, not if he wanted to complete the only mission that really mattered.

"Can't do what?" Sai asked, still leaning in close enough that he filled Sasuke's entire field of vision.

"This. and me. It can't happen." Why did he sound panicked? He should have better control over his voice than that.

"I think your brother would be happy," Sai said, somehow simultaneously cutting straight to the heart of the matter and saying exactly the wrong thing.

"You have no idea what would make him happy," Sasuke said, the edge of panic replaced with fury. "Get out." He couldn't budge Sai, so he stopped trying and tried to act like Sai's hovering was something he tolerated out of choice.

"He would be happy to see you happy," Sai said, with all the innocence of a civilian four year old.

"You have no idea," Sasuke repeated. "Leave me alone." Itachi hadn't wanted to see Sasuke _happy_, he had wanted to see him _strong_, powerful enough to have stopped the massacre at the age of eight or at least powerful enough to absolve Itachi of his crimes by acting as judge, jury, and executioner. As the lawful Uchiha clan head, executing a rebel. Sasuke had spent his whole life trying and failing to measure up to Itachi's expectations. Happiness had nothing to do with them.

"I'm sorry," Sai offered finally, and withdrew. At least three more sets of footsteps accompanied him to the door, and Sasuke didn't know whether to laugh or cry at Sai's inability to actually hold a private conversation in private. He settled for covering his eyes with his left hand and waiting for something else to go horribly, horribly wrong.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Sasuke couldn't suppress the start of surprise; he hadn't felt any other chakra in the room before Lee had spoken, and he didn't feel it now. He turned his head, hand still over his eyes, and looked through his fingers. Lee was sitting next to the bed, leaning up against the wall. For a very brief moment, Sasuke vividly remembered the aftermath of Lee's fight against Gaara, when it had been Lee lying in a hospital bed with an arm and a leg crushed, and that brought the memory flooding back.

"Gaara," he said. "Gaara happened."

Lee snorted.

"Is Gaara still alive?" Sasuke remembered most of the fight, but the tail end of it was blurry; he thought he'd swung a chakra-infused sword toward the Sacrifice, but he didn't know whether or not he'd actually managed to connect.

"He is impressed with your youthful vigor," Lee said, grinning suddenly. "As am I. You have not only demonstrated fighting prowess, but also prowess in the arena of young love!"

There was a manic edge to his declarations, which Sasuke read as relief that another teammate hadn't been killed, and then Lee's words actually registered.

"There is no young love," he said. "I am not – what – why – I'm going to murder Sai."

"You should have told us," Lee said, reproachfully. "We would have helped you along the glorious road towards eternal devotion."

"There is no eternal devotion," Sasuke said, but he didn't think Lee was listening. He opted to ignore the other boy's rambling Guy-esque speech in favor of figuring out what his injuries had been and trying to escape before someone else came to prod at him. Lee broke off his speech and looked at him reproachfully.

"Your right arm is badly bruised and you have thirty-eight stitches in your side," he said. "Now lie still."

"If you don't listen to the doctors when they tell _you_ to lie there and recover, then why should I?" Sasuke said, fairly sure that this Lee shared that characteristic with the boy he'd known.

"Because it's too soon," Lee said, and it was Neji he was talking about. Sasuke blinked and looked down at the ugly gash across his ribs.

"It's not broken?" he said, holding up his arm. It didn't hurt at all, which was probably explained by the IV plugged into it. He tugged out the needle and didn't feel a thing.

"It's not broken and you're not going anywhere." Lee patted him on the head, and Sasuke suppressed the reflex to fling him against the far wall for it.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I thought I said to leave me alone," he added a moment later, letting his irritation creep into his voice.

"You said that to Sai," Lee said. "Doesn't apply to me."

"Yes, it does." Sasuke swung his legs over the side of the bed and glared.

"Doesn't," Lee shot back, and by the time Sakura walked into the room Sasuke was on his feet shouting at Lee. Lee was giving as good as he got while still keeping the fight completely and totally verbal.

"You seem to be recovering well," said Sakura into one of the brief pauses. "You're free to go as soon as I check your stitches, unless you've broken something by shouting at it."

"I haven't broken anything," Sasuke muttered, and let her poke at his side. "Can I get dressed now?"

"Are you sure he's all right?" Lee asked, and Sakura smiled at him.

"He's fine," she said, and squeezed his shoulder. "Besides, you know as well as I do he won't actually stay in here."

"He would if I sat on him," Lee muttered, and Sakura laughed.

"Come on," she said, taking his hand. "Sasuke, your clothes are in the corner. Just sign this and you're free to go."

Sasuke signed the release form without reading it and pulled off the hospital pajamas without waiting for them to leave. The clothes in the corner weren't the ones he'd been wearing during the fight, and he wondered briefly who'd been through his room to collect fresh ones; he was going to have to rethink the traps on the doors and windows.

With the IV detached, the expected pain was starting to manifest. Sasuke dressed quickly and considered the door for a moment before the presence that had been at the window since he'd woken made itself politely but insistently clear.

"What do you want?" he asked, opening the window and leaning out.

"You didn't live up to the expectations," Gaara said bluntly, standing just below and off to the side. "I'd like a rematch."

"A rematch would level the village," Sasuke said. "I was told that there would be political repercussions for your death."

"And yet you still tried to stab me through the heart with a spear," Gaara pointed out. "As well as crush my skull and slice me in half with pure chakra."

"You seem fine," Sasuke said. Gaara wasn't even bruised, as far as he could tell.

"The Tailed Beast means I heal quickly." Gaara regarded him gravely. "You don't seem to share that advantage."

"What's your point?"

"That I want a rematch," Gaara repeated. "I'm willing to wait." He seemed remarkably less homicidal than he had the first time Sasuke remembered drawing blood on him, despite the manifestation of the tail and the scaled skin that Sasuke now clearly remembered.

"You can have your rematch when the Nine Tails is no longer free," Sasuke said, and slammed the window closed.

"Sasuke," came a voice from the door, and Sasuke had been so focused on the potentially psychotic Sacrifice lurking outside his window that he hadn't even noticed the distinctive chakra spike of the Leaf's Green Beast walking back in the door.

"Just tell me what the diplomatic repercussions for attempting to skewer the Mist's visiting representatives are and get it over with," Sasuke said, eying the floor. He could probably slice a hole straight downwards and just bypass both Guy and Gaara. "Unless there's another reason for the parade through my hospital room?"

Guy laughed, and something like relief at a normal response curled through the pit of Sasuke's stomach. "Such a glorious competition was an honor and a credit to both our villages," he said, teeth gleaming. Sasuke inferred that Gaara was in charge and hadn't pitched a spoiled fit about getting hurt in a match he'd insisted on. "I will accompany you back to your residence," Guy added.

"I can get there on my own," Sasuke said, and eyed the window again. Gaara was still lurking outside it.

"Far be it from me to send an injured comrade home unattended," Guy said, and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"You know he's not going to try for a rematch before this heals, right?" He waved his bandaged arm.

"Gaara has been swept up in the passions of youth before!" Guy proclaimed, and Sasuke's eyes nearly crossed as he tried to reconcile the words "Gaara" and "passions of youth" in the same sentence.

"I'm leaving now," he told Guy, and didn't try to stop Guy from falling into step beside him.

"You also need to know that the Fifth Hokage was chosen while you recovered," Guy said, approaching quiet and serious. "Our illustrious leader requires your presence tomorrow." He handed Sasuke a small scroll, which Sasuke tucked into a pocket without opening.

"Who?" Sasuke asked.

"The announcement has not yet been made," Guy said, and Sasuke shook his head. He'd find out soon enough.

"Was there something else you wanted?" he asked, too drained emotionally and physically to be anything but blunt.

"Just to ensure your safety, with current state of upheaval," Guy said. Either he was trying in a very uncharacteristically subtle manner to tell Sasuke that some of Gaara's entourage weren't above trying to take revenge for his physical assault on their leader – never mind who had started it – or Neji's death had driven him one step closer to functional insanity and he was trying to protect the rest of his team from everything.

"I'm okay," Sasuke said, a little more forcefully than he'd intended. "Don't you want to check on Lee and Tenten?"

Guy gave him a speculative look and Sasuke realized that the other two were probably shadowing them. He resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands and picked up the pace instead.

Tenten's chakra was obvious in the Namikaze residence when Sasuke walked back in the door; she was trying to hide it, but it was leaking like a sieve. Lee, not having normal ninja chakra, was much harder to sense, but Sasuke could feel him in Tenten's general vicinity once he started looking.

They were on the side of the house where he usually stayed, although not in his room. Sasuke stalked up the stairs and flung open the door doing a poor job of masking stray chakra, noting in passing that it was Naruto's bedroom. Then his brain stalled out as he noted in much greater detail just how much of Naruto's room it was.

Green spandex littered the floor, along with weapons, scrolls, and medical supplies. Namikaze Naruto was no neater than Uzumaki Naruto, but at least he was cleaner. Posters lined the walls, covered in encouraging phrases and lots of exclamation marks. The breaking point for Sasuke, though, was the rather crudely-sewn life-size stuffed Guy, complete with legwarmers, lying haphazardly across Naruto's bed. Sasuke blinked.

Tenten and Lee, the former crouched on the ceiling and the later lounging against one of the walls gave him startled looks as the door bounced off the far wall. Sasuke caught it without thinking as it ricocheted back to him, turned around, and went into his bedroom.

"I'm going to sleep," he announced, and locked the door. After another moment's thought, he locked the windows, drew the curtains, set every ward he could think of, and then stared at the ceiling. These people were all clearly _insane._

After a few minutes, Sasuke remembered the scroll in his pocket; there was nothing written on it other than tomorrow's date and a time. He burned the scroll with a tiny fireball and a feeling of vague satisfaction and resolved to show up late.

By the next morning, it had occurred to Sasuke that the one place he could probably depend on to not be full of crazy people was the Hokage's office, and he therefore showed up right on time.

"Oh, good, there you are," said Nara Shikamaru.

"You?" Sasuke said. "You're in charge?"

Shikamaru gave him a flat look. "I am aware of your particular situation," he said. "And of the agreement you had with the Third Hokage."

"…yes?" Sasuke said, interpreting Shikamaru's words as the total lack of trust their inflections signified.

"I don't have time to play babysitter," Shikamaru said, and Sasuke bristled. "That arrangement will continue as agreed upon." _The sooner you're gone, the better,_ said his expression.

Sasuke considered and discarded several possible responses over the next half-second, and settled on a formal bow. "Of course, Lord Hokage," he said. Shikamaru cocked an eyebrow at him; he knew perfectly well that Sasuke's textbook response, for all its outward deference, had a number of hidden shades of meaning. He probably even knew what most of them were.

"That's all. Out," Shikamaru said, and Sasuke withdrew.

If this Shikamaru was as clever as the one Sasuke had known, he was going to have to tread much more carefully; it wasn't that the Third had been easy to manipulate – his years and years of experience had given him an edge that was hard to counter, but Orochimaru's mind had given Sasuke a lot of insight into SarutobiHiruzen – but at least he'd had an idea of where he stood. Shikamaru was a mostly closed book.

"Well, damn," Sasuke muttered when his thoughts reached their inevitable conclusion. He was going to have to at least pretend to form deeper bonds with the people of this Leaf, and he was going to have to keep up the performance.

"Sasuke." The voice came from behind him at the worst possible time, from the one person Sasuke didn't want to use as a shield against the Fifth's suspicions.

"Sai," he replied cautiously.

Sai took a deep breath. "I will not give up," he said. "I believe you are attracted to me as well, and –"

"Yes," Sasuke said.

"..and I – wait, what?" Sai was ridiculously cute when he had that confused look to his face. Sasuke crushed the sentiment and focused on the plan taking shape.

"I said yes," Sasuke said.

"But I haven't asked," Sai replied.

"I know." Sasuke waited for Sai to take the next step.

"This is not how it's supposed to go," Sai muttered, almost too quietly to be heard, and Sasuke suppressed a smile at just how easy it was to unsettle the other boy. Sai took a deep breath. "Sasuke, please accompany me on a date."

"I said yes," Sasuke said. "But I'm not comfortable letting anyone else know about this," he added, and Sai tilted his head to one side.

"Is this a social convention of which I am unaware?" he asked.

"Uh, sort of." How and when anyone else learned of the liaison was something Sasuke wanted to handle very carefully, which was technically a social convention. He wasn't really lying to Sai, not that he was bothered by the thought. Not at all.

"Then I will see you this evening." Sai took his hand, and Sasuke didn't pull away. He even squeezed back a little before Sai walked away with a curious blend of relief and tension along his spine.

_Oh, yes, because secretly fucking one of the Leaf's assassins is going to get you Shikamaru's trust,_ said Sasuke's internal voice with no small amount of sarcasm.

"No, getting found out will garner the trust," Sasuke said in the back of his throat, just barely loud enough to qualify as a verbal response. "He'll assume I now have a personal investment in the outcome of the impending war."

_Then why the secrecy?_asked his internal voice, somewhere between amused and intrigued.

"Because if I start the relationship openly, the Hokage will correctly assume that it's a front meant to gain his trust. Hiding it makes it seem genuine; there's no reason to put on a performance that no one knows about." Sasuke had nearly made it out to his favorite training ground, and there were fewer people around, but he still kept his voice in the back of his throat.

_And when he sees through your reasoning?_ His internal voice had gone from curious to fully skeptical.

"The way this comes out, he won't," Sasuke said confidently.

_You realize you can't control what everyone else does_, his internal voice pointed out.

"Not everyone," Sasuke said, and passed his hand over his eyes. "Just because Neji reacted poorly to the Sharingan doesn't mean everyone will. Now go away and let me think in peace."

_This is going to come back to bite you in the ass, and when it does, I will be laughing all the way to your grave,_ the internal voice said, and the sensation of it being in the back of his head vanished.

"Just so you remember it's your grave too," Sasuke snapped back despite being fairly sure it wasn't listening.

Sai showed up at precisely seven, wearing his normal clothing and smelling rather strongly of lavender. Sasuke, who had made precisely zero special preparations, eyed him askance. "What is that?" he asked.

"What is what?" Sai asked, and Sasuke let the matter drop.

"Never mind," he said. "Did you have somewhere in mind to go?"

"I did, but then you said you wanted to keep this just between the two of us," Sai said, and Sasuke glanced at the street behind him.

"Come inside before you say things like that," he said. Sai's voice had been perfectly pitched to reach Sasuke's ears and Sasuke's alone, but Sasuke preferred to be cautious.

_More like paranoid,_ said the internal voice. He ignored it and closed the door behind Sai.

There were certain social rituals that Sasuke generally also chose to ignore, but today the process of making tea gave him time to think. He and Sai had the kitchen to themselves, with Minato more or less remaining in the other bedroom; he was largely recovered from the virus, but still spent a great deal of time sleeping. Sasuke didn't anticipate any interruptions there.

He still didn't want to have the conversation in the kitchen, which meant that he beckoned for Sai to follow him into his bedroom.

"You're attracted to me," he said finally, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Yes," Sai said. "Isn't it mutual?"

"I… suppose it is," Sasuke said slowly. "Sai, you don't want to do this."

"I do," Sai said. "I am quite sure." He smiled slightly at Sasuke. "I feel warm when I look at you. My heart speeds up. My –"

"Okay, okay," Sasuke interrupted. "I believe you, but you don't want – I'm not – you shouldn't be with someone like me."

"Why not?" Sai asked, genuinely curious.

"I'm not going to be here forever," Sasuke said. "After the Nine Tails is sealed, I'm going home. I hope I'm going home."

"But I might not be attracted to you forever," Sai said. Sasuke blinked at him and readjusted his mental parameters for dealing with Sai.

"Okay, then," he said, which wasn't quite as quickly as he'd planned on going along with Sai, but he reasoned that Sai wasn't behaving according to the predictions and Sasuke was just thinking on his feet. He was almost surprised to find that his hand had migrated to Sai's knee, and that Sai had at some point edged much, much closer.

"I think this is a good place to start," Sai said, and leaned forward to kiss him again. This time, Sasuke was a willing participant, and he told himself that his enthusiasm was feigned. This was for the plan, for the mission, to build trust and Sai's hands were under his shirt.

"Wait." Sasuke pulled back, breathing harder than he should have been. "Wait."

"Was that too fast?" Sai frowned. "I don't want to stop."

"No," Sasuke said. "It wasn't." This isn't wrong, he told himself, and let Sai take the lead.

Afterwards, Sai curled around him almost possessively; it hadn't been perfect, but Sasuke thought first times usually weren't. Then again, he wasn't entirely certain it had been Sai's first time and he didn't want to ask. It wasn't like he'd really known what he was doing either.

"You want me to go where?" Sasuke must have misheard Shisui. There was no other explanation.

"Please join me for coffee," Shisui said, again, with exactly the same inflections that he'd used the first time around.

"Why?" Sasuke lowered his short sword, careful not to grind the tip into the dirt, before thinking better of the entire exercise and resheathing it along his back. With Shikamaru still playing the I Don't Trust You game, he wasn't getting any actual work to do, and had to find other ways of not going mad from boredom. Not that he'd had much in the way of actual work to do under the Third, either, but the quarantine had been the root of most of that.

"I would like to speak with you," Shisui said, and aha, that was the answer to getting him to stop repeating himself. Ask a different question.

"About what?"Sasuke asked, eyes narrowed. He hadn't spoken to anyone from the Uchiha clan in well over a month, not since the incident with the extraordinarily creepy underground room.

"I would like to speak with you," Shisui repeated, and Sasuke gave up.

"Fine, fine, give me half an hour to change," he said, plucking at his sweat-soaked shirt. Grime was sticking to his skin, the dust from the dry weather floating in the wind kicked up by his feet. Practicing forms outside had seemed like a fantastic way to work off some stress, until the unthinkable had happened and the ghosts of his family had actively sought him out for the first time ever.

Shisui nodded, named a trendy café, and vanished. Sasuke reasoned that the quicker he went, the quicker whatever it was that Shisui wanted would be over with. He was clean, dressed, and there in under twenty minutes.

Shisui was, of course, waiting for him. Sasuke sat opposite him, ordered a latte, and endured Shisui's silent stare while waiting for his coffee to arrive. The coffee itself was just hot enough to cut through the dusty taste in his mouth.

"Sasuke," Shisui said, and leaned toward him. Between the earnest expression on his face and the apprehension clearly expressed in his shoulders, Sasuke had a sudden horrible thought.

"Please tell me you're not hitting on me," he said, narrowly avoiding adding the word "too" to the end of the sentence, and Shisui actually twitched.

"Hitting on…" he repeated slowly, and very carefully leaned back until he was sitting straight up in his chair. "No."

Sasuke did not actually offer up a small prayer of gratitude out loud, but it was a near thing. There was enough insanity in his life at the moment without his cousin attempting near-incest. "Then what do you want?"

Wordlessly, Shisui handed over a small box. Sasuke put down his coffee and took the box, careful not to brush against Shisui's fingers as he did so. It was heavier than he expected, and it had been carefully taped shut. The tape was yellowish with age, and the line of dust along one corner that hadn't quite been wiped away was enough to make it clear that the box had been sitting somewhere for years.

"What is it?" Sasuke asked, turning it over in his hands. The box made a sort of metallic slithering noise.

"It belonged to Uchiha Sasuke," Shisui said. "It was a gift to him from Itachi."

"Oh," Sasuke said, fingers tightening around the box almost imperceptibly. His first instinct had been to fling it as far away as he could. He didn't need reminders of his dead younger self from a brother that hadn't been his.

"He asked that it go back to his brother," Shisui said.

"When he was executed." Sasuke didn't need any further explanation, but apparently Shisui was going to give it to him anyway.

"In order to spare the Uchiha clan heirs undue distress, neither was told of his brother's impending death," Shisui said with a bitter little smile. "Itachi asked me to take care of his brother." The tone of his voice left no doubt as to how, exactly, Shisui had interpreted that wish.

"Why give this to me?" Sasuke tapped at the box.

"I couldn't bury it with Itachi," Shisui said. "This is the closest I can get to fulfilling that last request."

Not for the first time, Sasuke wondered if his family might be prone to madness; Shisui had certainly clung to a dying wish for far longer than most people would consider sane.

_At least you escaped. Lucky, that,_ said his little internal voice. Sasuke agreed with it for once.

"I –" he started, intending to refuse the box. "Thank you," he said instead, and stowed it in his pocket. The look of relief that flooded Shisui's face was vulnerable enough that it made Sasuke's skin crawl, and he looked away. By the time he looked back, Shisui had regained his self-control.

"The gratitude is mine," he said, and sipped his coffee.

Sasuke sat in the café long enough to finish his own drink before excusing himself, if for no other reason than to pretend that Shisui didn't make him extremely uncomfortable. His skin prickled as he left, though, and the cold wind outside had nothing to do with it.

The box went onto the windowsill as soon as Sasuke returned to his room, where it collected dust for nearly a week while he buried its existence under other things; the headiness of his new relationship with Sai and the now-regular gatherings with what remained of Team Guy were almost enough of a distraction. Almost, but not quite. The box sat on his windowsill and stared at him, until Sasuke could almost hear it whispering to him as he slept. It almost felt as if it had chakra of its own, chakra that had once been his.

When he couldn't quite ignore it any longer, Sasuke picked it up and stared at it for a few moments, debating on whether to open it or just leave it taped closed. Or perhaps just throw it away; Shisui wouldn't have to know.

Curiosity was the deciding factor; it felt almost as if there were something alive in the box, even though he knew that nothing alive would have survived nearly a decade on a shelf. Sasuke split the fragile tape with his thumbnail and lifted the dusty lid off the box. The whispers of almost-chakra ceased abruptly as the contents of the box made contact with the air.

Silver, white, and red sparkled up at him from inside, the latter two colors eventually arranging themselves in his eyes into the Uchiha clan symbol. Sasuke picked up the pendant – the red and white fan of the Uchiha clan crest – strung onto a slender metallic chain. The lacquer covering the colors was clear and without cracks, the colors themselves bright and unfaded. Even the metal of the chain looked shiny and new, as if it had never been worn.

Which, if Sasuke remembered correctly, would have been the case; Itachi had intended it as a gift to his brother, but it had never made it into his dead counterpart's young hands. Sasuke looked at the only representation of his family's crest that he now owned, sparkling brightly in his hand and heavier by far than it looked.

The Uchiha fanboy shirts had been left behind; he wore standard blacks, now, if not the flak vest that promoted ninjas were allowed to wear, and he hadn't worn anything with his clan symbol since. It hadn't felt right; he wasn't an Uchiha here, he wasn't part of the family for all that he was technically the clan head in his own world. But this necklace was from Itachi, even if it wasn't _his_ Itachi, and just holding it made him feel a little closer to his brother.

"Of course," he said, sliding it over his head, "that just mean I'm close enough to kill you all over again, you bastard, if this is another one of your little games." The chain was the perfect length to rest the pendant against his heart, and he tucked it under his shirt before a sound outside caught his attention and he forgot about the pendant entirely.

A solid black squirrel scampered by his window, leaving a dirty pawprint on the glass. The pawprint had faint and fading chakra patterns spelling out one of the more remote training grounds; Sasuke didn't want Sai to come to the Namikaze residence too often – and the mere thought of Minato discovering the two of them in a compromising position made him shudder; he hadn't quite decided how the relationship would be outed, but that wasn't it – and there was no privacy at the temporary ANBU barracks.

Sai chose the place they'd meet each time, sending an ink messenger with the information. Sasuke tapped at the window glass with a tendril of his own chakra and the pawprint faded away entirely. He pulled on a jacket and meandered down the stairs and out the door.

"I thought you'd never get here," Sai said when Sasuke finally arrived, having taken a very indirect route. He tugged Sasuke under the sheltering branches of a huge evergreen; the tips nearly brushed the ground, leaving the space inside almost invisible from outside eyes. Sasuke wrapped his arms around Sai, reveling in the sheer feeling of it.

"I didn't want to be seen," Sasuke said, and Sai stepped back.

"Why?" he asked.

"I…" Sasuke hadn't prepared an answer for this question, and his brain didn't seem to be functioning quite properly with Sai looking at him like that.

"Are you ashamed of being seen with me?" Sai asked.

"No," Sasuke said quickly. "That's not it. It's… I don't want there to be repercussions for you." He paused. "No one trusts me, you know."

"I believe that is incorrect," Sai told him seriously. "You have a seal on your tongue. That is a symbol of trust."

"The Third trusted me," Sasuke corrected. "The Fifth doesn't."

"And you think there will be social repercussions if it is widely known that you and I are having sex," Sai said. He looked sad. "That doesn't seem fair to you."

Sasuke blinked back a sudden sting of tears and pulled Sai into a tight hug. "It's okay," he said. "I'm happy as long as I have you." There was an unmistakable ring of truth to his words. Sasuke put it down to the moment and held Sai tighter. Sai's arms came up slowly around him.

"I will trust that you know how to navigate the situation better than I do," Sai said, and the conversation was over.

"Naruto's coming back tomorrow," Sai said afterwards, when they'd both cleaned up and dressed and were sitting a little distance apart on one of the training walls.

"Is it the end of the month already?" It seemed that it had been both impossibly long and only a few days since Naruto had left on the month-long mission to the Mist.

"It is," Sai said. "You know that."

"I'd lost track of time," Sasuke said, his hand creeping over Sai's and tangling their fingers together.

"I'd like to tell Naruto about us," Sai said.

"I…" Sasuke hesitated. "I don't think that's a good idea," he finished. "At least, not right away."

"Sasuke, there is no reasonable explanation for your wanting to keep us a secret." Sai pulled his hand away. "Are you afraid of how others might react?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," Sasuke said without thinking about it.

"I'd like to tell Naruto," Sai repeated, and wound his fingers back around Sasuke's. "Not right away. But soon."

"He's important to you?" Sasuke asked.

"He's a very close friend," Sai said. "I don't like keeping secrets from him."

"I see." One thing that hadn't changed across worlds was how Naruto affected those around him, Sasuke thought distantly. He had some kind of inexplicable charisma, something that clearly affected almost everyone he came into contact with. "Soon," he agreed, with no such intention. "I have to go."

"Go safely, and return," Sai said, turning the conventional words into something special.

"I will," Sasuke heard himself say.

He didn't see Naruto come in the gates late the next day; Shikamaru had apparently decided that Sasuke was trustworthy enough to perform some kind of work, and he found himself with a variety of low-ranking tasks that really had no other purpose but keeping him busy. Sasuke glared at the ninjas manning the mission desk every time they handed him another scroll, but the only response he got was a sympathetic shrug.

"You appear to have pissed off the Hokage somehow," Hayate said to him after Sasuke came back from the third one dripping mud.

"You don't say," Sasuke said, handing in the very terse report. It was as muddy as he was. Hayate held it between thumb and forefinger.

"This is the last one for the day," he said, handing over yet another scroll.

"You're fucking kidding me," Sasuke said, but he took it. Hayate was still at the desk when he returned, the mud having dried. It was flaking off of him with every step he took.

"I think," Hayate said, eying him with some trepidation, "that he's testing your patience. On purpose."

"I know exactly what he's doing," Sasuke said, and handed over the even shorter report. Shikamaru was testing the surface of his loyalty. And his patience, Sasuke amended internally, and made his escape.

Naruto was at the kitchen table when Sasuke walked in the door. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth. Sasuke held up one hand.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said. "I'm going to bathe. And you are going to forget you saw me. When I come back out, we're going to pretend that I just walked in the door."

"Keeping you busy, are they," Naruto said. "Old man never did have much of a sense of humor."

"Oh," Sasuke said. Had nobody told Naruto about what had happened in the Leaf while he'd been gone? He shook his head slightly and fled to wash off four D-rank missions' worth of grime.

Naruto had made another cup of tea when Sasuke came out, and he picked it up. "Welcome home," he said.

"It's good to be home," Naruto said. "Wait here." He bounded out the door and up the stairs with considerably more energy than Sasuke wanted to see anyone exhibit.

"What the fuck." Sasuke sat down at the table, drinking his tea. He nearly lost an entire mouthful of tea when Naruto showed up in the doorway again. "What the hell is that thing on your head?" The orange jumpsuit should have been the worst of the aesthetic transgressions, because orange spandex didn't look good on anyone. Green spandex didn't look good on anyone. And the spandex was beside the point, because the beige monstrosity on Naruto's head was shorting out Sasuke's brain.

"What, no welcome home? No I'm glad to see you? This is what I get after being gone for a month?" Sasuke did not appreciate Naruto's playing along with his request as much as he might have otherwise. There was also no way to tell if Naruto was joking or actually sulking with the thing on his head getting in the way. Sasuke reached for it in a burst of energy he hadn't thought he had left. "Take that off."

"No, you keep your hands off my new hat." Naruto clutched at the wide brim and dodged. "It's incredibly trendy. From Grass."

"That's not even a word," Sasuke said, eyeing the hat. Stiff sides rose above its wide curved brim, ending two long parallel peaks before dipping to form an irregular valley down the center of the top. "How is that even a – you know that thing is hideous, right?"

"It is not." Naruto backed away from him, holding the sides of the hat protectively. A wide band covered in multiple clashing colors – predominantly orange - was fixed just above the brim. "I brought you one."

"You didn't."

"I did. I got hats for my team, too, but this one is for you." With a flourish, Naruto produced another hat from nowhere. This one was a creamy shade just shy of brilliant white, and the colored band was a dazzling array of blues. It was still hideous.

"Did you use a transformation technique just so you could hand it to me dramatically?" Sasuke demanded.

"No," Naruto said, looking shifty, which meant that he absolutely had, and while Sasuke was preparing to tell him exactly how his specific variation on the transformation technique worked, Naruto clapped the hat on top of Sasuke's head.

The world went white. Sasuke shoved the hat back out of his eyes, trying to remove it entirely, but Naruto's hand was firmly on top of it.

"No, no, it looks great and if you don't stop struggling it'll crush it!" he was saying.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with you," Sasuke told him, but he stopped trying to remove the hat and resolved to just burn it later.

"Wanna see the other ones?" Without waiting for an answer, Naruto produced a stack of hats with a flourish. "The green and red is for Guy-sensei." The hat was a shade of green that matched the jounin vest perfectly, while the predominantly red band with its splashes of orange recalled Guy's forehead protector exactly.

"Did you have these custom made?" Sasuke asked, because he couldn't imagine that the color schemes had come right off the shelf.

"No?" Naruto said with a guilty twitch that meant that he had. "It doesn't matter. This one is for Lee." The second green hat was the shade of Lee's green spandex, with a largely orange band with vertical stripes.

"You put his legwarmers on a hat," Sasuke said. "I can't believe you put his legwarmers on a hat."

"Shut up, he's going to love it."

The sad thing was, Sasuke reflected, Naruto was probably right. He stopped his eyebrow from twitching with distaste through sheer will.

"This one is Tenten's." Naruto produced a dark brown hat with a vividly pink and cream band. Sasuke had to admit that the color scheme did seem like it would suit Tenten rather well, which was a pity, because the shape of the hat was still hideous.

"And this one is Neji's," Naruto was saying, holding out a dark gray hat with a lilac band. It was almost a nice hat, even, with the ridiculous peaked top and brim somewhat more subdued than the others, and how had no one told Naruto what had happened to Neji?

"Uh," Sasuke said, trying to think of a way to be tactful.

"I bet I can get him to wear it," Naruto said cheerfully. "Come on, we'll go find Neji first."

"Neji's dead," Sasuke said, losing the battle with tact.

Naruto blinked, and then laughed. "You're going to have to try harder than that. Seriously. I'm going to give him the hat."

"I'm not joking." Sasuke couldn't look at Naruto's face; the wide blue eyes were far too piercing. "Neji collapsed during training two weeks ago."

Naruto stared at him, the beginnings of confusion and doubt beginning to creep across his face.

"Remember when he collapsed last month?" Sasuke said.

"He was unconscious for days," Naruto whispered. "I remember."

"It happened again," Sasuke said. "But this time, it… he... there was nothing anyone could have done."

_Except you,_ said his internal voice. _If you hadn't hypnotized him again, nothing would have happened._

"But he was better," Naruto said. "You're lying. You have to be lying. Haha, you got me, now stop whatever it is you think you're doing because it's not funny!"

He was clutching the hat – Neji's hat – so hard that the brim was starting to show signs of strain. Sasuke rescued it from Naruto's grip. "Come on," he said.

"Where?" Naruto asked, sulky and glaring.

"Just come on." Sasuke led him outside, toward the Hyuga family cemetery. Once Naruto figured out where they were going, he dug in his heels.

"I'm not going into the Hyuga cemetery so you can play some sort of sick joke on me," he hissed.

"Shut up and keep walking." Sasuke grabbed him by the wrist, Neji's hat still in his other hand, and pulled him toward the appropriate headstone. "There."

The offerings of flowers were still fresh, and there was a cup full of water sitting in front of the stone. Neji's name was clearly fresh, the edges still rough and undulled by wind and water. Sasuke put the hat in front of the stone, placing some of the flowers over the brim as an afterthought.

"I'm sorry," Sasuke offered. Naruto sank down in front of the stone, staring at it with unseeing eyes.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Naruto murmured, and Sasuke remembered that apparently no one had told him about the Third, either.

"Did you hear anything from home?" he asked, not really wanting to be the bearer of all the bad news at once.

"We were all tested for some sort of potential virus," Naruto said. "Before we'd been on the road more than a couple days. But we all turned up negative, and we didn't hear anything else, so I thought it was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing," Sasuke said.

"There's more?" Naruto twisted around until he was sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up against his chest. Sasuke crouched down until he was more or less on the same level; it was way too awkward to just keep looking down.

"The chakra virus wasn't nothing, and it wasn't an accident. It was deliberately spread. The man who spread it is dead." He wasn't sure the tongue seal would let him say that much, but apparently as long as he didn't actually mention the revolution, he was safe. "He committed suicide rather than be taken in, and he had the same black metal that I think sends some kind of signal in real time."

"Sends it back to Tobi," Naruto said. "So he unleashed a plague, and then sat back and watched." He was beginning to sound angry now, rather than hopeless, and Sasuke was relieved to see it. "So who died?" he asked. "Someone else I know must have died, or you wouldn't have that look on your face."

Sasuke hadn't thought he had any kind of expression on his face. "What look?"

"The worried look. Just tell me."

Sasuke took a deep breath. "The Third Hokage."

"The old man is dead?" Naruto put his head on his knees, arms wrapped around his legs. "Who else?"

"I don't know. No one else I know." The terms of his trust-me-Shikamaru persona meant that he should be comforting; Sasuke reached out a hand and put it on Naruto's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too." Naruto dashed a hand across his eyes and stood up. "Neji," he said, as if in greeting. Sasuke followed him out of the cemetery, leaving the hat behind as an offering for a nonexistent ghost.

"My father?" Naruto said, after a moment.

"He caught the virus, but he's recovering. He's still recovering. It's taking him longer than it took most people." Sasuke paused. "I'm not sure if I should tell you this, but the Third caught the chakra virus from your father."

"Wait, what?" Naruto stopped walking suddenly enough that Sasuke nearly bumped right into him.

"The Third came to speak to your father about sealing the Nine Tails into you."

"My father won't go along with that," Naruto said, and started walking again.

"Wait, you know?" Sasuke blinked for a moment and then had to jog to catch up. "But you didn't…"

"It was my idea," Naruto said. "I have the same type of chakra as my mother; she was the last Sacrifice, and she was chosen for her chakra. I'm the one best suited to contain it."

"But when we talked to the Third, you didn't answer my question about you being his choice as Sacrifice."

"You were new," Naruto said. "Besides, the only other family with compatible chakra is the Uchiha clan, and no one wants to put that kind of a weapon in their hands."

"Weapon?" Sasuke asked. The Leaf had never seen its Sacrifice as a weapon; it had only seen a monster, or maybe a cage, but there had never been any sense that Uzumaki Naruto should be used to defend the Leaf. In fact, Sasuke was fairly sure he'd been discouraged from attending the Academy.

"Yes." Naruto nodded. "The fox has reserves of chakra that a human couldn't even dream of. I've been honing my chakra control for years to take advantage of that. If I can do a lot with a little, imagine what I could do with the fox."

"Its personality comes through along with the chakra," Sasuke said. "You have to be careful of that."

"I've had the instructions," Naruto said. "I've been told. This is something I can do to protect my home; why wouldn't I do it?"

"Uzumaki Naruto never thought of the fox as a weapon," Sasuke said. "Neither did my Leaf. He was just its vessel, and they hated him for it."

"I'm sorry for that," Naruto said. "But I can be a weapon to protect my home." He paused. "Was the Third trying to get the techniques to seal the fox?"

"He seems to have convinced your father to perform the technique himself," Sasuke said. He was fairly sure he was correct; he hadn't been privy to the conversation, but he'd seen the Third leaving the house. There really wasn't another reason for him to go inside, other than to talk to Minato. Curiosity had driven Sasuke to talk to Minato while he was mostly asleep; the Sharingan had been an effective tool to get Minato to repeat what the Third had wanted.

"No," Naruto said.

"Yes," Sasuke retorted.

"You don't understand." Naruto chewed on his lower lip. "Part of the reason the fox is free is because he refused to seal it in me when I was just a baby."

"Yeah, I saw the dramatic reenactment," Sasuke reminded him. "He agreed to do it. The one in my Leaf did, you know. He sealed it into you as a kid."

"Huh." Naruto ducked down a side road, moving toward the main Leaf cemetery. "Can I have some time alone?" he asked, when Sasuke went to follow him.

"Uh, yeah." Sasuke watched him walk down the road, back straight and shoulders shaking slightly, and then went home.

A tiny little squirrel scampered up to Sasuke and sat quietly by his foot until he actually looked at it. It took his attention for permission, wriggled up his leg to hop over to his elbow and ran down his arm, leaving a neat inky paw print on the back of his hand before leaping to the floor and dissolving.

"What the hell was that?" Tenten asked, looking from Sasuke to the fading ink stain and back.

"Sai thinks he's funny," Sasuke said. "Naruto gave him a book about humor before he left."

"At least he's trying?" Tenten wrinkled her nose sympathetically and discarded another card.

"It was good for him," Naruto said, defending his actions. He'd been red-eyed that morning when Sasuke had seen him, but he'd seemed normal throughout the day. When Sasuke had suggested that maybe it was a good time to have his team around him, Naruto had turned the occasion into a poker game.

"Your turn," Tenten was saying to Lee.

"I will defeat you this time," Lee declared, and threw down his own card. Given the massive pile of throwing needles in front of Tenten, Sasuke thought she was the safe bet for victory.

"Unlikely," Sasuke said, remembering too late that that was usually Neji's line. He would promise to not actually look at anyone's cards, and then proceed to neither lose as badly as Lee nor win as handily as Tenten. Sasuke had felt all that proved was that Neji had had a very good handle on how much he could win without being accused of cheating, but he hadn't ever said anything. It had been part of the game.

"Sasuke, it's your turn," Tenten said. Apparently no one else had noticed that he'd stolen Neji's usual line.

"Oh." He put down a card without really looking at it, which was apparently a move wrong enough to not only ensure that he lost, but ended the game entirely.

"Again?" Lee said, gathering the cards to shuffle as Sasuke pushed a stack of needles and blades toward Tenten.

"I have a late shift at the hospital." Naruto tossed his cards onto the tabletop. "I'll see you guys later, okay?" He was gone before anyone could reply.

Lee turned to Sasuke. "What about you?"

"I actually have some business to take care of." Sasuke stood. "I'll be a while, so please feel free to remain."

The four of them had been in Naruto's kitchen; it was apparently the favored place for periodic card games on nights when, for some reason or other, no one wanted to be alone. In Naruto's place, Sasuke would have been furious; Naruto, rather than expressing anger at not being told of Neji's death, simply seemed lonely instead.

"Go have fun," Tenten said absently, already focused on the next hand. Sasuke pushed his pile of weaponry (none of it was actually in usable condition, but it made great gambling stakes) toward Lee. "Hey!"

"He needs it more than you do," Sasuke said serenely. He fully expected Tenten to clean Lee out anyway.

"What he said," Lee added, and Sasuke let himself out.

The squirrel's pawprint, when analyzed for chakra, read "Hatake." Sasuke wiped the ink off his hand (although it was already fading) and set off on a roundabout path through alleys and over a few of the lower roofs until he found himself at the back of the relatively small Hatake compound. There was a tiny splash of ink to the left of the gate; after making sure no one was watching, Sasuke vaulted the wall in that exact spot. A tingle of wards closed behind him, but didn't set off any alarms.

The Hatake compound was a new one for the two of them; it wasn't exactly easy to find places to be discreet, what with Sai living in the ANBU barracks and Sasuke under the Namikaze roof. It wasn't like they could just go to a hotel, either, not if they were trying to keep this quiet, and Sasuke wasn't ready to have the relationship outed.

"You're late," Sai said from inside the nearest door. Sasuke slipped off his shoes and hid them next to Sai's before closing the door behind them.

"Team Guy," he said by way of explanation, and Sai tilted his head to one side quizzically. "They were – it's not important." Sasuke reached out to pull Sai into a kiss, and somehow ended up pressed against the wall, Sai's hands already under his shirt.

"Late," Sai said again, around Sasuke's tongue, and Sasuke dragged him closer. Sai's hand caught in the Uchiha necklace, and Sasuke winced as it tugged on his neck. "What's that?"

Sasuke pulled his shirt over his head and Sai peered at the pendant for a few seconds. "That's nice," he said, finally, and Sasuke could tell he was trying to be socially appropriate.

"Thanks," he said, and tried to direct Sai's attention elsewhere. Sai's pants were already noticeably tighter, and he groaned when Sasuke cupped his ass with both hands.

"You're sure no one will be here?" Sasuke said, sliding sideways to pull Sai's shirt over his head.

"I'm sure," Sai said, taking the shirt away and dropping it on the floor. "Come on." He didn't get more than three steps down the hall when Sasuke tackled him.

"Fuck that," Sasuke said. "You're stalling."

Sai grinned up at him and gave as good as he got, even with both hands pinned above his head, until they were both naked in the unseasonable April cold and his hand was gripping Sasuke's dripping cock. And then, maddeningly, he stopped moving altogether.

"Did you hear something?" he asked, completely still and listening.

"_No_," Sasuke growled, pushing forward. "It's an old building. The walls are settling." The world could be ending for all he cared.

"Stop that," Sai said, and Sasuke heard a crash from somewhere near the front of the house that was definitely not the result of old walls creaking, unless said walls were also collapsing. His training took over, and he climbed silently to his feet. The closest weapon was the short sword in his belt, which was halfway down the hall. He had it in his hands in seconds, with Sai right behind him.

The house was dark, all the windows covered, but there was just enough light to see. Sasuke took point, hyper-aware of the shuffling noises from near the front door and a vague wet noise he couldn't quite make out.

"Cold," Sai whispered from behind him, and Sasuke frowned.

"Now is not the time," he said quietly.

"No, it's colder than it was a few minutes ago," Sai whispered back. Sasuke risked a glance; the other boy was visibly shivering. "You can't feel it?"

"Go back," Sasuke said, making an executive decision. Something was clearly wrong with Sai and he wasn't going to be useful at all in whatever the upcoming confrontation was. "I'll handle it."

"You're not going toward that chakra alone," Sai hissed. "It's all _wrong._"

Sasuke closed his mouth with a snap. "Fine. You circle around and come from the outside. We'll trap it between us." He hadn't felt any chakra at all, but Sai would be safely out of the way outside.

"Okay." Sai nodded. "Give me to a count of twenty." He slipped out a window, and Sasuke waited only until he was out of sight to keep moving.

He carefully reached out with all his senses, and identified Sai's chakra source as he rounded the corner. It was Kakashi, leaning against the wall in the main entryway, what was visible of his face hidden in shadow. All sense of foreboding vanished, and Sasuke stood up straight.

"You said he wasn't going to be here," he called to Sai outside, sliding his short sword back into its sheath. "Kakashi-sensei," he started, in a normal voice.

Kakashi started sliding sideways, and the entire house shook hard enough to shatter the only window in the entryway before settling into total silence. Sasuke suddenly felt very calm, as if the earthquake had happened in slow motion and the world hadn't come up to speed quite yet.

Kakashi hit the floor, and Sasuke started towards him, but his bare foot slipped in something warm and liquid. He staggered, catching himself on the wall, and the entryway was suddenly flooded with light.

The entire floor was stained with red, and the wall where Sasuke had touched the light switch was smeared with blood as well. Kakashi was pale, sleeves on both arms pushed up above the elbows. It was his forearms that caught Sasuke's attention, though, slashed diagonally and deeply enough that he thought he could see the white flash of bone underneath. Something was resting next to Sasuke's foot - a discarded blade. Sasuke couldn't tell if it had been bloody before it was dropped or if that was just from what was on the floor already. The door slid open.

"Go get help!" Sai snapped, rushing inside, and his voice snapped Sasuke out of his dream-like inaction. Sasuke ran. He paused barely long enough to pull on his pair of pants, suppressing a flash of irritation at Kakashi's abysmal timing, before darting toward the hospital. He wasn't sure if he was lucky or not that Sakura was on duty that night; he delivered the message and then ran back towards Sai while Sakura gathered the proper equipment to follow him.

Sai was applying pressure to Kakashi's wrists and pouring chakra into him; Sasuke took over, kneeling in the now-congealing puddle. "Go get dressed," he said. "Before they get here."

Sai gave him a look casting clear aspersions on his sanity. "But –" he started.

"Do it," Sasuke said, using his command voice, and Sai slipped down the hall. He was perfectly dressed when he returned, just before Sakura threw open the door.

"What the fuck," Sakura said, dropped to her knees, and gathered chakra along her hands. "Any sign of poisons or other external agents?"

"Nothing," Sasuke said, just as Sai answered with "There was chakra I didn't recognize, but neither of us saw anything."

Sakura didn't give a verbal response to either one of them; she stabilized Kakashi and then vanished with him while Sasuke and Sai watched.

"Should we follow?" Sai asked. Sasuke wiggled his sticky toes and pulled on his shirt. He made a half-hearted attempt to use the hem to clean the blood off of his hands; it was already ruined.

"Yeah," he said. "Someone will want to ask us questions eventually."

The someone ended up being one of the Uchiha clan members Sasuke knew by sight but not by name, still part of the Leaf police force despite both eyes having been removed, and the questions were more or less straightforward, until the issue of what, exactly, they had been doing at the Hatake compound came up.

"Sex," said Sai forthrightly, and someone in the hallway dropped something.

The officer, being closest to the door, nudged it closed with one foot. "Oh?" he said.

Sasuke buried his face in his hands. "We couldn't go to either the ANBU barracks or use the – my room," he said. "We were _trying_ to be discreet." He glared at Sai from behind his hands, but his heart wasn't in it. While the outing of the relationship wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind, the method was more or less perfect. It was out of Sasuke's control, which meant that Shikamaru couldn't accuse him of engineering it.

_Or he could extend his distrust to Sai and decide the two of you are conspiring against him_, his internal voice pointed out. Sasuke kept his attention firmly focused on the external.

Sai looked back at him serenely. "This situation calls for honesty."

"Oh, shut up," Sasuke muttered, letting embarrassment leak into his voice.

"Are you sure you didn't see anyone?" The officer tapped at his memo pad, not facing directly toward Sasuke, but also clearly not talking to Sai.

"Neither of us did. We heard something fall in the front hallway, and there he was," Sasuke said.

"I felt it," Sai said over the end of Sasuke's sentence. "There was something there. Something cold. It shook the entire house."

"There was nothing there," Sasuke snapped. "I would have known." Sai's insistence that there had been something there was worrying; either Sasuke was failing to notice something obvious (probably not the case, he told himself), or there was something seriously wrong with Sai. The second possibility was an extraordinarily unpleasant prospect.

"Thank you," interrupted the officer. "Both of you please proceed down the hallway for a physical examination to rule out any potential aftereffects." He stood and left. "We'll be in touch."

What he did not say was that if something external had worked to incapacitate Hatake Kakashi, then it most likely had the strength to affect both Sasuke and Sai physically or mentally, and that any of signs of that happening – or the lack thereof – would help determine whether or not the injuries had been self-inflicted.

"It was there," Sai muttered, but he left the makeshift interrogation room and went down the hospital corridor anyway. He hadn't been gone more than a few seconds when Naruto walked into the room carrying a broken glass.

"You," he said, glaring at Sasuke.

"Me what?" Sasuke said, already tired of the entire evening. "Is Kakashi all right?"

"That's a relative term," Naruto said. "He's alive, if that's what you mean."

"Close enough," Sasuke said, matching Naruto glare for glare. He had no idea what had the other boy all riled up, and he wasn't in any mood to deal with it. "Excuse me."

Naruto stood his ground when Sasuke tried to push past. "What the fuck do you think you're doing with Sai?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing with Sai?" Sasuke folded his arms. "What does it look like I'm doing with Sai?"

"It looks like you're fucking around with my friend," Naruto said.

"Take the word 'around' out of that sentence, and you'd be right," Sasuke said, spitefully. "What about it?"

_This is exactly why you didn't want anyone to know,_ said the little internal Orochimaru-voice, and Sasuke told it to shut up. It was off its game, anyway, it had all been part of the plan. Not wanting to face down reactions from Sai's closest friends for doing exactly what he was doing hadn't been part of his considerations at all.

"You don't know what you're doing. _He_ doesn't know what he's doing." Naruto's glare, if anything, was even harder than it had been.

"I think Sai is just as much of an adult as I am, and can make his own decisions," Sasuke said, gauging the distance between himself and the door.

"You might have noticed that Sai doesn't exactly interact normally," Naruto said, picking and choosing his words very carefully.

"As a matter of fact, I have." Sasuke turned to fully face Naruto. "I've also noticed that he's perfectly aware of what he's doing, and so am I. He's not an idiot you need to protect."

Naruto bristled. "That's not what I said."

"No, it's what you implied. This is none of your business." Sasuke pushed past Naruto, and this time Naruto let him. "I know you're upset about Neji, but stay out of it."

"This doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with Neji!" Naruto shouted, and Sasuke made the mistake of stopping.

"Look, I'm sorry you weren't here when your teammate died. I'm sorry you weren't told until you came back. But that and this are two different things, and you need to stop hovering over everyone else!"

Naruto caught Sasuke's arm before he was entirely out of reach. "I don't like to say this," he started.

"So don't say it," Sasuke said.

"Shut up and listen. This is not about Neji." Naruto pursed his lips for a moment, and then went on. "Look, I don't usually like that whole If You Hurt My Friend, I'll Make You Suffer thing. I trust my friends. I trust their judgment. And frankly, it's usually pretty insulting, because the last person who should want to hurt someone is the one they're involved with. But I'm making an exception for you."

"Oh, joy," Sasuke said, keeping his voice as dry as possible.

"I don't trust you," Naruto said, and Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "With Sai," Naruto amended. "You're going to leave, and he's going to have to stay behind, and I don't want to have to pick up the pieces when that happens."

"Believe it or not, I had that conversation with him," Sasuke said. "And do you know what he said? He said, 'I don't know if I'll still be attracted to you in six months.' I think he knows better than you give him credit for."

"Huh." Naruto finally let go of Sasuke's arm. "Still."

"I don't want to hurt your friend," Sasuke said softly. "I swear." It was even the truth, he thought.

Sai turned out to be in perfect health, both mentally and physically; nothing showed up as being wrong on any test that he was given. Sasuke was a slightly different case.

"Your chakra seems out of balance," Sakura told him, hands still glowing from the diagnostic technique.

"It isn't," Sasuke said.

"You'd be the last to know," Sakura said. "It's like there's another – there's another type in there, along with yours."

"I guess he's not entirely gone, then," Sasuke said. He'd thought Orochimaru had been purged – Itachi had killed the final remnants of him in Sasuke's mind before dying himself, and Sasuke had been unable to perform any of Orochimaru's particular summons since then.

"Who's not entirely gone?" Sakura asked. The statement hadn't mollified her in the slightest; if anything, her worry had increased, and now it had been joined by suspicion.

"It's a long story," Sasuke said. "I'm not going to tell it," he added when she just kept looking at him expectantly. "If it seems like there's another type of chakra in my system now, it's because there was for a while. He tried to steal my body and I took it back. End of story."

"Steal your body," Sakura mouthed. Sasuke folded his arms. "Well, I'd like to keep an eye on it to make sure nothing destabilizes," she said.

"Nothing has destabilized in months, there's no reason it should start now." Sasuke got up to leave, but Sakura pushed him back down and glared. "Fine, fine, you can check it again, are you happy?"

Sakura grinned. "You like it when people worry about you."

"I do not." There was a tiny smile playing at the corner of his mouth, though, and once he realized it was there, Sasuke let it stay. It fit with the cover persona.

"You do," Sakura said. "If you start to see or hear anything that doesn't seem right, I want you to tell someone, okay? A lot of the imbalance is around your eyes and ears."

"Like what?" Sasuke asked.

"I don't know, something that doesn't seem possible or something that's just out of place." She gave him a pat on the shoulder. "I'll see you back in a little bit."

"Yeah, yeah." Sasuke left by the window, partly to avoid Naruto lurking in the hallway.

_That went well,_ said his little internal Orochimaru-voice.

"Yeah, it did," Sasuke said back.

_And what's your next move?_inquired his internal voice.

"Now we wait."

Apparently a psych eval was exactly the right way to get work; Sasuke was again sent on back to back low-ranking assignments for the next couple of days and had no chance to talk to either Sai or Naruto. Sai sent an ink mouse out to find him on a couple of occasions with brief unimportant messages; when it did, Sasuke scrawled a quick note on the nearest piece of paper and sent it back.

None of the assignments were particularly draining, but all of them were aggravating in one way or another, and Sasuke was usually more relieved than he wanted to admit to get back to the room that he almost thought of as his and ignore the outside world.

All of which made it even more of an annoyance when the outside world decided to come to him in the form of a psychotic wandering outlaw; Sasuke was woken from an uneasy sleep by something tapping at his window frame. The first tap was enough to open his eyes and by the time the second tap sounded against the pane, he was below the window with a blade in his hands.

The edge of the blade was reflective enough to show him what his other senses already knew; there was chakra against the wall that shouldn't be there, and it belonged to none other than Hidan. The crazy priest, three-bladed scythe nowhere in sight, waved cheekily at his reflection in Sasuke's blade. Sasuke sighed and opened the window.

"What do you want?" he asked, not bothering to dodge the thrown needle that wasn't going to come anywhere near his skin. It brushed through his hair to embed itself in the wall behind him, and Hidan bounced up to the windowsill. Sasuke turned his back on him and climbed back into the bed, pulling the blanket up.

"Is that any way to greet a friend?" Hidan asked.

"You're not my friend," Sasuke said. "You're bloodthirsty, insane, and I'm fairly sure that you'd sacrifice me to your war god given half a chance. That doesn't count as friendship." Sasuke would have agreed that provoking Hidan was a very bad idea for most people; he also didn't count himself as most people and was pretty sure he could behead Hidan if it came down to it.

"That's a terrible thing to say," Hidan said, but he didn't look upset. He seemed more amused than anything else, although it wasn't necessarily any kind of gauge for how he would act.

"Get out of my window," Sasuke said flatly. "There's an entire village of Leaf ninja out there who would probably love to take a crack at you."

"No, I don't think so," Hidan said cheerfully, now sprawled almost bonelessly on Sasuke's windowsill. He made it look perfectly normal to be twisted into a narrow little space, one foot higher than his head and his three-bladed scythe resting across his chest. Sasuke had no idea where it had come from, given that Hidan had definitely not had it bare moments ago. Maybe it was his summons, he thought vaguely.

"I don't want to talk to you," Sasuke said, trying again. "_Go away_." Not that he thought the words would work on Hidan, but if he could bargain Hidan down to letting Sasuke follow him out of the village, the resulting fight would result in a lot less damage to Sasuke's personal space. He also wouldn't have to explain why one of the few names still in the bingo books had apparently dropped by for a chat.

"Well, I'm not here for _you_," Hidan said, sounding vaguely insulted. "How's Naruto?"

"You're here to talk to Naruto," Sasuke said flatly. He had three blades hidden in his blankets, and he thought he could reach at least two of them. Hidan probably knew perfectly well that said weapons were why Sasuke had hidden his hands, which meant it wasn't much of a back-up plan, but it was something.

"Of course I'm not here to talk to Naruto," Hidan said. "I just asked how he was doing."

"You're still completely insane," Sasuke said. "And he's fine. What do you – how do you even know Naruto?"

"Sometimes we spar." The cheerfulness was back in full force, and Hidan had slid sideways so that his head was hanging down inside the room and the scythe was resting on the floor. "Well, occasionally. Well, a few times. Okay, twice. It was twice. He's a good kid. I'd hate to have to kill him, so I'm leaving him alone." Hidan grinned, which was a rather creepy sight upside down.

"You're not heartbroken over killing me, I take it," Sasuke said. "Now what do you _want_?"

"I was told you had a run-in with Kakashi that left him nearly dead," Hidan said, and it sounded threatening despite his absurd posture. "That's not for you to do."

"I did no such thing," Sasuke said. "And how the hell would you even hear about it if I had?" It was a stupid question and he regretted it the moment it left his mouth; as off the rails as Hidan was, he was still a ninja, and ninjas had ways of obtaining information.

"Rumors," said Hidan, flapping one hand, and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"It wasn't me," he said, reaching for one of the blades.

"Then tell me who it was." Hidan slide all the way to the floor, managing to rotate himself enough to land on his feet. "And I'll go sacrifice that one instead. My god demands a sacrifice, and I hate it when he goes hungry."

"I'd like to see you try to murder a ghost," Sasuke said, hand now firmly on the most reachable of his blades.

Hidan perked up. "A ghost?Really? I've never tried to sacrifice a ghost."

"Look." Sasuke shifted as if he were about to throw off his blankets and stand up, which put his other hand in contact with the second blade. "You come back outside the damn village, and I'll explain."

"Or you'll just alert the – no, wait, you probably don't want them dead." Hidan frowned, rubbing absently at his chest. It looked like he'd added furry decorations to his shirt, but Sasuke couldn't see them clearly under the faded cloak Hidan habitually wore.

"Just let me get dressed," Sasuke said, and Hidan stood up and turned around. "I'll meet you outside," Sasuke added.

"Well, if you don't show up, I'm going to get bored, and then your precious friends are going to start dying, and you don't want that, do you?" Hidan said. By his tone of voice, he was asking a perfectly reasonable question. "Look, I turned around for you, how much more polite do you want me to get?"

"Oh, fuck off," Sasuke said, and took his time pulling on his clothes and inspecting his weapons. "Can we go now?" The gray of false dawn was lightening the eastern sky by the time he finished.

"Fabulous," Hidan drawled, and Sasuke followed him across the roofs and over the walls. If Hidan had come in the same way he'd gone out – unlikely – there was a slight gap in the Leaf's nocturnal defenses. Sasuke made a mental note to submit a report about it; he was perfectly capable of sneaking around and liked it that way, but it didn't mean he wanted anyone else to be able to do it.

The furry patch on Hidan's shirt appeared to have migrated by the time he stopped moving and turned to face Sasuke again, far past the village walls, and suddenly the scythe was swinging abruptly toward Sasuke's head. Sasuke put up a hand to stop it, catching the lower-most blade on the back of his glove and projecting boredom as hard as he could.

"I'm not going to talk to you if you keep trying to cut my head off," he said. "I'm not Kakashi."

"Which is why we're here," Hidan said, pulling the scythe back dramatically and planting its butt a foot into the ground. "So do tell me what nearly killed my favorite sparring partner."

"Some kind of ghost," Sasuke said; personally, he was fairly sure that Kakashi had done it to himself, but Sai had been convinced of some incorporeal presence, and he was going to run with that. It made for a better story, and Hidan didn't seem likely to want to hear anything else.

"Liar," Hidan said, and threw knives. Sasuke dodged and blocked.

"What the hell," he said, although there wasn't too much heat to it.

"I can feel your chakra well enough to know that you're lying," Hidan said, trying to punch Sasuke in the jaw. Sasuke parried that, too, and just kept blocking.

"You want to know what I really think?" he asked, getting under Hidan's defenses and planting a solid kick to his midsection.

"Yes," Hidan wheezed; Sasuke had managed to knock the air out of his lungs.

"I'm pretty sure those cuts were self-inflicted." He dragged a forefinger down the inside of each of his forearms in demonstration. "The knife was right there."

Hidan panted for a moment, getting his lungs working enough to speak smoothly. "You actually believe that," he said. "You're completely wrong, of course, he's not capable of it at all, but you actually believe it."

"It's how I _found him_," Sasuke snarled. He didn't appreciate being called a liar when he was actually speaking the truth.

"But then, you've obviously never seen the seals." Hidan giggled.

"Seals?"

"The ones on the insides of his arms. Oh, they'll have to be re-inked now." Hidan was laughing harder now.

"What about them?" Sasuke hadn't seen any seals, although he hadn't been looking and Kakashi had been bleeding rather badly at the time. Every other time he'd seen the man, Kakashi had been wearing long sleeves, it suddenly occurred to him.

"They're for restraint," Hidan said, and the rising sun hit his face just at that moment. It gave him more than a little bit of a crazy look, not that he needed help in looking crazy. He did that fine no matter what lighting he was in. "So that he can't hurt himself," Hidan explained further when Sasuke didn't respond.

"Why would he – I don't want to know." Sasuke had heard of that particular use for seals before, but he'd never actually seen a set; most ninja who were that far gone were generally allowed a quiet death, or sent on a suicide mission.

_But if that lunatic is telling the truth, maybe Sai is less crazy than he seems,_ said Sasuke's internal voice. _Maybe there was something there after all, and you just missed it. Sai passed his physical, after all, remember? You're the one that sort of didn't. _

"Rethinking the ghost theory, are we?" Hidan said.

"Maybe," Sasuke said. It was still disconcerting to think that Sai had noticed something he hadn't, and he wasn't willing to consider that there had actually been something there. On the other hand, if Hidan were actually telling the truth – and that was a dangerous assumption to make – the facts were stacking up against him.

"Well, then," Hidan said smugly. "So I get to sacrifice the ghost, then?"

"Good luck finding it," Sasuke said."It vanished."

"Well, fuck." Hidan wrenched the scythe out of the ground and twirled it lazily in circles. "Fine. Don't let it happen again."

"What, me? I'm not responsible for what a ghost I'm not even sure exists does," Sasuke said.

"You are now," Hidan told him. Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Fine. Whatever."

"I'm so glad we're on the same page." Hidan turned to go, and the fuzzy patch on his shirt had moved yet again. In fact, it was actively moving as Sasuke watched it.

He couldn't ignore it any more. "What is that thing _crawling _on your shoulder?"

"Huh?" Hidan glanced downwards, on the wrong side first, and then over to what looked like a ball of fluff with a tail. "This? This is Spiky."

"Spiky," Sasuke repeated flatly.

"Still as sharp as you ever were," Hidan said cheerfully, and plucked the fluffball off his shoulder. The part of Sasuke's brain that analyzed threats noted for the first time that Hidan was uncharacteristically wearing not only gloves, but an actual whole shirt. None of his usually bare chest was visible. Unfortunately, the little warning voice wasn't loud enough to drown out the rest of his brain staring at the bizarre sight of the manic and maniacal Hidan cooing at a fluffy pet.

"Here, you wanna see?" Hidan asked, and there was a brief struggle between Sasuke's threat assessment and his desire to placate the zombie into going away faster.

"Sure," he said, and reached out his hands. Hidan dropped the fluffball onto Sasuke's palm. It was incredibly soft and fluffy, except for where spikes of pain were suddenly radiating up his arm. "What the fuck?" Sasuke gasped, and tried to shake the fluffball off. It clung to his skin, inching its way up his inner arm. He could almost hear it laughing at him. No, wait, that was Hidan.

"That's normal," Hidan said through his giggles. "It'll fade eventually."

"Bullshit!" Sasuke had just enough presence of mind to not electrocute the fluffball entirely, although the electric charge racing down his skin did send it leaping back towards Hidan. The pain wasn't subsiding now that the creature was gone; if anything, it was worse. "What the hell is that thing?"

Hidan laughed again, sounding almost delighted. "It's a puss caterpillar! From the country of Wind!"

"Fuck," Sasuke ground out, spun on his heel, and walked away. If the damn zombie wanted to stab him in the back, it would probably be more pleasant than the sharp ache spreading from his forearm through his chest and up into his skull.

"What, are you done with it already?" Hidan's voice floated up from behind him, but Sasuke ignored him. Ever step he took jarred his head and his arm, and he clamped down on faint but rising nausea.

It was at least forty minutes back to the Leaf, and it felt like an eternity. Sasuke was entirely sure, by the time he saw the gates, that he'd died at least six times, only to be reborn once again walking through the forest. Or maybe he'd just tried to throw up the poison six times; he wasn't sure that it had worked. No, if it had worked, he wouldn't be feeling worse with every step.

Naruto, when Sasuke all but fell through his window cradling a severely welted forearm and gritting his teeth in an effort to keep from screaming, was decidedly not sympathetic.

"But you've _met_Hidan," he said. "Why would you touch anything he gave you?"

"It was soft and fluffy!" Sasuke said, and then stopped. The words, when he said them out loud, sounded ridiculous.

"It was a puss caterpillar," Naruto said, examining the marks on Sasuke's forearm. "It's not that bad. Come on."

Sasuke choked back the urge to tell Naruto where he could shove his comment of "not that bad" and followed him away from the window. The first aid kit was next to the door; Naruto pulled something sticky on it and spread it over the marks. They responded by stinging even worse, and Sasuke couldn't stop a yelp. Naruto yanked whatever it was back off, and Sasuke could see several glistening hairs stuck against the cloth.

"The hell," he said weakly. At least the nausea was gone; he could feel his heartbeat throbbing in his temples and wrist.

"Oh, the hairs are actually spines. They're coated with poison," Naruto explained. "Now that they're out of your skin, the swelling should go down a bit." He threw out the used cloth and pushed Sasuke into the kitchen. "Put your arm in there."

Sasuke shoved his hand under the cold water tap; he couldn't decide if it felt good or not, but Naruto's hands gently cleaning the area definitely helped.

"And then leave this on there for a minute," Naruto said, producing an ice pack from somewhere. "I'll see what I can do about neutralizing the poison that's already in there."

"Thanks," Sasuke muttered, holding the wonderful cold against his skin. "I'm supposed to be immune to poison," he complained. "This shouldn't be happening."

"I should just let you suffer," Naruto said, hands glowing ever so slightly. Sasuke blinked; when had he activated the Sharingan? It was supposed to flip itself on in life-threatening situations only, and he was fairly sure this didn't actually count. He turned it off, and the glow around Naruto's hands vanished.

"Please don't," he said. "Let me suffer, I mean," he added when Naruto gave him a quizzical look.

"I mean, really, _Hidan._" Naruto shook his head, and numbness spread out from beneath his fingertips. The relief was so great that Sasuke's knees nearly gave out; he grabbed the edge of the sink with his unmarked hand just in time.

"You okay?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," Sasuke said. "I've learned my lesson. Next time I'll just cut off Hidan's head."

Naruto's mouth twitched. "Good luck with that. What did he want, anyway?"

"He's crazy, what does it matter what he wanted?" The pain was still gone, along with all the feeling in Sasuke's arm. He gathered his feet underneath him and leaned on the sink as Naruto wrapped bandages around the stings.

"Because he's easier to deflect if you know what he wants?" Naruto tied off the end of the bandage and tapped it. "Can you feel that?"

"No." Sasuke flexed his wrist experimentally; he could still move it, but he was completely numb from elbows to fingertips. "You can't deflect crazy. You just kill it. Or ignore it."

"Is there a reason you don't want to tell me what he wanted?" Naruto asked, gathering his supplies and placing them back in their box.

"He heard about Kakashi." Sasuke pulled his sleeve back over his bandaged arm; it looked perfectly normal, except for the white tape on his palm and the back of his hand. "He apparently now thinks I'm responsible for his general wellbeing."

"Ah." Naruto paused. "He probably won't actually try to kill you. Not seriously, anyway. I think he likes you."

"Not helping," Sasuke said.

Sai, predictably, zeroed in on the bandaged hand the next time Sasuke saw him and wouldn't let the matter go.

"All encounters with rogue ninjas are supposed to be reported," he said seriously, running his fingers up and down Sasuke's arm as if making sure it was still all there and in one piece. Given that the painkilling salve had long ago worn off, the sting marks twinged every time Sai touched them.

"Oh, sure, and give Shikamaru another reason not to trust me." The Fifth hadn't spoken to Sasuke directly since bluntly telling him that he didn't trust him, but Sasuke found himself with fairly regular assignments from the mission desk. None of them were solo tasks, but at least he wasn't hunting down pets or draining swamps, and he was adding to his list of Leaf ninjas with the tongue seal.

"Not telling him will give him more reason not to trust you," Sai said.

"Does Kakashi report it every time he sees the crazy priest?" Sasuke didn't think he was going to win the argument that way, but it was worth a shot.

"He's a special case and you know it. All of Naruto's encounters are properly documented." Sai frowned. "I'm not sure you're –"

"Fine, fine, fine, show me the paperwork." Sasuke pulled his arm out of Sai's hands. While Hidan wasn't on the list of things he wanted to discuss, there was a conversation he wanted to have with Shikamaru; his cooperation with the Leaf was contingent on the revolution eliminating Tobi and containing the Nine Tails. Sasuke wouldn't see compensation for his efforts until that happened, and as far as he could tell, nothing was going on.

Arguments could be – and had been, via his internal voice – made that the regime change made things difficult, that any schedule would be thrown off by the head of the organization being unexpectedly replaced. On the other hand, Sasuke thought that was the sign of an inefficient organization, and he was starting to rethink his involvement with it. He still hadn't managed to acquire the Third's notes on the gateway that had brought him here, but Neji wasn't the only person in the village susceptible to the Sharingan.

_You can't brainwash the entire village, _said his internal voice.

"Watch me," Sasuke returned, and Sai gave him an odd look. Sasuke smiled at him reassuringly.

Predictably and according to plan, the submitted report was shortly followed by a summoning; Sasuke found himself in the Hokage's office with an irritated Shikamaru. Then again, Sasuke reflected, Shikamaru was usually irritated; it seemed to be his default setting.

"Stop talking to rogue ninjas," Shikamaru said, waving the piece of paper at him. "Unless you have prior authorization."

He was, of course, referring to the tongue seal and the revolution, and Sasuke hadn't been sent out of the Leaf since the near-disaster with Sai in February. "You realize he came to me," he said.

"Yes, and why does he even know who you are?" With a tiny flare of relief, Sasuke realized that it wasn't suspicion that had prompted this particular meeting; Shikamaru's body language was all wrong for it.

"Because I followed Kakashi outside weeks ago and Hidan was there? Do I need to submit another report for that?" Sasuke crossed his arms and matched Shikamaru glare for glare.

"No." Shikamaru folded his hands and put them on the desk. "You are, of course, aware that contact with rogue ninjas outside of mission parameters is forbidden."

"If he comes looking for me again, I'll do my best to avoid him."

"You're authorized to attempt termination," Shikamaru said, and handed him a scroll. "Of course, there is very little information on either Hidan or his blood god."

"Beheading," Sasuke said absently, scanning the scroll. It was classified as an A-Rank mission, payment to be made upon completion, with no particular date set; the next time he saw Hidan, he was to attempt to either terminate or incapacitate him by any means possible. "If his head is separated from his body long enough, he'll starve to death."

"Oh, really." Shikamaru gave Sasuke a considering look, some of the suspicion returning to his expression.

"I told you where I came from," Sasuke said. "I was briefed on Hidan."

"By Orochimaru," Shikamaru said. "Fine. If you can take his head, do it."

Sasuke took the scroll and tucked it into the pouch at his waist. "How is this helping with Tobi?" he asked bluntly.

Shikamaru froze. "Excuse me?"

"I'm not going to dance around this issue," Sasuke said. "You're not honoring the contract the Third made."

"And you're not privy to the inner workings of the Village of the Hidden Leaf," Shikamaru snapped.

"By which you mean you have no plan," Sasuke snapped back.

"Now is not the time for this," Shikamaru said, completely ignoring the accusation. "You will be given instruction when I give you instruction."

"You're going to sit and plan, and keep planning, and looking at the options until they're all gone." Sasuke stalked over to the desk and leaned over it. "Pick one. Go forward."

Shikamaru leaned back, apparently completely at ease despite the frustrated Uchiha invading his personal space. "I won't make allowances for you again, no matter where you come from and no matter how much of an asset you could be," he said softly. "You will be given instruction when the time comes for you to act on that instruction."

Sasuke really hated not having all the information. He considered, briefly, trying to hypnotize Shikamaru with the Sharingan, but the potential consequences weren't something he was quite ready to face without backup. What he did have was a very good idea of the changes Shikamaru had made to the layout of the Hokage's office. He backed off.

"Fine." As he walked out the door, a shadow in the corner of his vision caught his eye, but when he turned his head to look, it was gone. He searched the rooftops anyway, looking for wayward chakra signals.

"Do you have someone following me?" he muttered, but he wasn't about to actually go and ask. Had he been in Shikamaru's position, he would have had someone following him too. What was rather unsettling was that he couldn't find whoever it was. "Fucking ANBU."

"How was your meeting?" Sai asked, appearing next to him with no warning.

"Fine," Sasuke said. Sai had had one of the shadows tailing him, too, but it was gone when he tried to face it head on and invisible from the edges of his vision. "Pointless, but fine."

"It's not that you're not trusted," Sai said.

"Oh, it is." Sasuke smiled humorlessly. "Believe me, I wouldn't trust me either. Not without a very short leash."

"It takes time." Sai put a hand on Sasuke's still bandaged arm.

"Hopefully I'll be gone when the time comes." Sasuke squeezed Sai's hand and removed it from the still painful caterpillar stings. "You know, you could probably recruit Hidan."

"What?" Sai blinked. "To do what?"

"He's very hard to kill. That would probably come in handy." Sasuke started down the street in a random direction, mostly to see if he could flush his shadow out. Sai fell into step beside him, keeping pace when Sasuke abruptly changed directions and paths, going from street level to the rooftops and back again.

"He can't be trusted," Sai said.

"Point him at something to sacrifice and make sure there aren't any allies in the area, and he'll be incredibly useful." The shadows weren't manifesting, and Sasuke couldn't find a tail; either whoever was following him was better than they had any right to be, or there hadn't been anything there to begin with.

"Are you looking for something?" Sai asked.

"No." Sasuke dropped back down to the street; they'd made it most of the way to the Hokage monument and he still saw nothing.

"Spar with me?" Sai asked, and Sasuke shook his head. He was too on edge to spar against Sai; he didn't want to blunt his reaction times and reflexes so as to not cause too much damage.

"I'm going outside to practice." There were a number of places just outside the walls of the Leaf that could be used for individual or group training and meditation. With enough luck, at least one of them wouldn't be occupied.

The third training ground Sasuke found turned out to be the one that wasn't full of either Academy students or obnoxious jounin. Sai kept following him, though, and Sasuke was vaguely tempted to tell him to fuck off. He wasn't sure whether or not he regretted not saying it when Sai pinned him to the nearest tree and tried to take his pants off.

"What the fuck," Sasuke said, hanging onto his pants with one hand and Sai with the other. "What are you doing?"

"Engaging in acts of a sexual nature in a place where one is likely to be discovered is supposed to heighten the experience," Sai said, with the slightly rote quality to his tone that meant he'd found whatever he was talking about in a book or heard it from someone else.

"No, it doesn't," Sasuke said, still clinging to his pants with one hand. "Stop that."

Sai let go of the pants and Sasuke straightened them out. "Naruto said –" he started.

"Don't let Naruto give you advice about sex. Ever." Now that he had a free hand, Sasuke wrapped it around the back of Sai's neck and drew him in closer. "Just come ask me. That's how this is supposed to work."

"Are you sure?" Despite the dubious tone in his voice, Sai was willingly cooperating with everything else. He wound his fingers through Sasuke's hair.

"I'm sure." Over Sai's shoulder, Sasuke saw something dark flash across the other side of the clearing, too blurry and too quick to see clearly without the Sharingan. Sasuke cursed and shoved Sai behind him, short sword in hand less than half a second later.

"What?" Sai, to his credit, had switched gears instantly and come out with a blade in both hands.

"I saw something." Sasuke scanned the trees, not wanting to activate the Sharingan. It was too exposed outside the village; anything could be hidden in the leaves and the possibility of Tobi's real-time surveillance wasn't something he wanted to risk.

"Do you know what it was?" Sai asked, shifting position until he and Sasuke were back to back.

"If I knew, I would have said," Sasuke said shortly, still searching. There was no sign of anything passing through the branches, but a good ninja wouldn't leave traces.

"Just a shape?" Sai pressed. "Moving quickly?"

"Yes." Sasuke didn't want to look back at Sai, but he nodded. "I thought it might be Shikamaru's ANBU, keeping an eye on me."

"I've been seeing them in the trees for days. I don't think they're the ANBU." Sai shifted his feet. "I thought I was the only one."

"What exactly do you see?" He still couldn't see anything, not in any direction. Even the earth below them appeared quiescent.

"You see them too." As Sasuke risked the glance behind him, Sai looked around, rubbing his forearms in a rare display of nerves. "The ones I see are never friendly."

"That's not what I said." Something finally slipped through the trees, just outside Sasuke's field of vision, but it was gone again when he spun to face it. "Fuck it all, I just wanted to fucking practice forms, but no."

"This is just like last time," Sai said, and he was standing in a classic defensive position now, short sword in shaking hands and outline vaguely fuzzy in the last light of the setting sun.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Sasuke debated activating the Sharingan, but his earlier reservations still held true; if that was another one of Pain's avatars, then it would send the image right back to Tobi and he would be fucked. "What last time?"

"At Kakashi's," Sai said. "It's cold, just like it was then."

"Are you sure that wasn't –" Sasuke started, and something rustled just ahead of Sai. It was at that point that Sasuke registered the word _cold_, and how wrong it was, but Sai was already talking.

"I was properly examined. There's nothing wrong with me." Sai's voice was tight and he was staring at the exact spot where Sasuke had heard the rustling.

"It's no colder now than it was a few minutes ago." He almost had it, in the trees above, but he wasn't fast enough to catch sight of it. Sasuke narrowed his eyes and prepared to activate the Sharingan anyway.

"I –" Sai started and then something shapeless sped out of the brush to his left and slammed into him. He hit the ground and skidded, arms raised protectively above his head, forearms scraped and bleeding. The not-quite-visible thing vanished as Sasuke spun on his heel and looked over.

"Fuck it," he said, and switched the Sharingan on. Something bright was hovering near Sai, but it dissipated as soon as he looked at it. Sai climbed to his feet, weapon still in perfectly steady hands.

"You saw that, right?" he said, and in an odd counterpoint to his hands, his voice sounded almost hysterical.

"Calm down," Sasuke snapped. Chakra – and how was that possible, without a body to contain it? – was coalescing to his left, just behind Sai. "Duck!"

Sai obeyed without hesitation, dropping flat, and Sasuke threw a fireball at the cloud of chakra. It puffed into smoke as the fireball hit, but it was already pulling itself back together before the fireball had fully dissipated. He'd never seen anything like it, and suddenly the absolute zero of the chill rolling off the chakra field around the two of them was clear; it was the strongest killing intent Sasuke had ever felt, and it was directed at both of them. Knowing that they had to move or they would die, Sasuke pulled Sai to his feet. "Come on." He was almost surprised that his breath wasn't visible in clouds of white.

High-pitched laughter rang through the leaves, just barely audible, and Sasuke started running toward the Leaf walls. The next strike came from his right, again aiming for Sai, and Sasuke slashed at it with his sword. It fell apart as the steel weapon touched it, and it seemed to Sasuke that it took just a little longer to reform the second time.

"It can be cut," Sai said, all traces of panic gone from his voice.

"Faster," Sasuke said. In the midst of a headlong rush through the darkening forest, chased by some half-visible malicious cloud of chakra, Sai managed to give him a perfectly deadpan _Well, no shit_ face. Sasuke was almost impressed, until something he hadn't seen slammed into his arm and numbed his fingers. He let go of Sai, stumbling over an unseen obstacle on the ground, and went down hard.

The next few minutes were hazy; Sasuke alternated between fireballs and stabbing toward the thing – ghost? No, it couldn't be an actual ghost – with his short sword, but Sai was gone. Patches of flame were starting to burn, the trees around them catching fire, and the flickering orange light illuminated the ghost swirling in the smoke.

"I've got you, you bastard," Sasuke growled at it, chakra swirling around his fingers, and threw a chakra-infused blade. "Let's see how you like this!"

The weapon impacted solidly with the ghost, but instead of breaking the ghost apart, it just stuck in its chest and hung there. The chakra surrounding the metal bled off and the blade dropped, and the only conclusion Sasuke could reach was that the ghost had absorbed the chakra somehow.

"That's not fucking possible!" he shouted at it, but the ghost didn't seem to care. It howled towards him, and Sasuke threw his short sword directly down its throat.

The ghost ducked the sword, but Sasuke could see Sai behind it, hanging by the neck from a slowly breaking branch. He leapt forward, knife in one hand and throwing another fireball as he did, and grabbed Sai. The noose around Sai's neck dissolved as the edge of Sasuke's blade slid through it, and Sasuke pulled the other boy's unconscious form out of the way. The ghost flickered in front of them. Sasuke slapped an explosive tag onto another blade and used it to pin the ghost to a tree.

"Let's see you avoid that, you asshole," he said, threw Sai over his shoulder, and ran through the burning trees for the dubious safety of the village.

He was barely out of range when the tag exploded, throwing them both to the ground. He lost hold of Sai and the other boy tumbled to a stop a few feet from the Leaf's outer walls. Sasuke climbed to his feet and then ducked instinctively.

The Leaf response team had just missed the edge of the blast and had apparently decided that he was the cause of the mayhem just outside the walls. Sasuke didn't fight beyond dodging the thrown weaponry – the ghost was the priority. It was gone, though; he couldn't see the accumulation of chakra anywhere.

"It took you damn well long enough!" he shouted at the first visible member of the response team, his chakra pattern showing through the smoke before his body did. The chakra resolved itself into the weirdly incomplete patterns of the fox-less Namikaze Naruto.

"What the hell was that?" Naruto demanded, stepping protectively between Sasuke and Sai, who was just starting to twitch.

"What was that? That was something trying to _kill both of us_, in case you didn't notice from way the fuck back there!" Was that the ghost? No, just another member of the response team; someone Sasuke didn't know by name, moving through the smoke and putting out the fire.

"What I saw looked like you losing any semblance to sanity you might have had and trying to light the damn forest on fire!" Naruto shouted, and Sasuke nearly punched him in the face.

"I am not crazy!" he bit off, still scanning the surrounding area for any of the unusual chakra.

"Stop looking for something that isn't there!" Naruto grabbed his shoulders, and Sasuke did punch him then. Naruto took the hit to the jaw and blocked the follow-up kick, twisting Sasuke's ankle to the side. Sasuke followed the motion and landed in a graceful crouch.

"Look at Sai's neck and then tell me there was nothing there!" he snarled.

Naruto reached forward, telegraphing his movements, and yanked Sasuke down towards Sai. The noose around Sai's neck was not only still there, it was the remnants of the belt Sasuke used to hold his sword against his back. "Stop looking for something that wasn't there," Naruto hissed, and for just a second he looked like the fox.

Sasuke shivered. "It was there," he said. "I swear there was something there. This time I felt it." He'd seen it, too.

Naruto's eyes narrowed, and the resemblance to the fox strengthened. "The only chakra out here was yours," he said. "And hide your eyes."

"That's impossible," Sasuke repeated. "There was something here. I felt it. It tried to kill both of us." He wasn't about to dispel the Sharingan, not when it was the only way he could see the ghost coming.

_Even for a ninja, seeing things that no one else could see is generally a bad sign_, his internal voice pointed out gleefully, and he muttered at it to shut the fuck up.

"What was that?" Naruto leaned forward, the suspicion on his features deepening. "And for fuck's sake, Sasuke, _hide your goddamn eyes._" The rest of the response team was surrounding them, now, although it wasn't much of a threat. There were two ninjas Sasuke didn't know but whose chakra indicated a low combat priority, Naruto, and Yamanaka Ino.

The ghost was nowhere in sight; Sasuke still didn't want to be caught unawares again. Rather than let the Sharingan go, he cast a small and careful illusion over them. From the expression on Naruto's face, he knew exactly what Sasuke had done. He apparently decided it wasn't worth fighting over.

"What did you say?" he repeated instead.

"I didn't say anything," Sasuke snapped. Behind Naruto, Sai was groggily sitting up and feeling at his neck. "Sai, are you all right?"

"Fine," Sai mumbled, voice scratchy and hoarse. He pulled the remains of the belt away from his neck and scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly. "What happened?"

"Everything's fine," Sasuke said, and Sai's gaze sharpened as he finally noticed the response team and Naruto's aggressive stance.

"Everything does not appear to be fine," he said, and Naruto flushed.

"We're heading over to the hospital," Naruto said, but he might as well have been shouting that he was lying. Sasuke looked at him in fascination; how Naruto could be such an effective undercover operative and yet still be so completely unable to control his own emotions was a paradox.

"You do not seem to be telling me the truth," Sai said, after a pause.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Sasuke said, shifting until he was properly positioned to defend himself. Sai would be fine; no one was trying to kidnap him. Sasuke cared very little about anyone else in front of him at that moment. If they thought they were going to take him somewhere against his will, they had another think coming.

"Sasuke, please don't make an issue of this," Naruto said, stance deceptively open and relaxed, hands out at his sides. His chakra was swirling madly, though, in preparation for a sudden move.

"An issue? You just accused me of trying to kill my lover," Sasuke said, carefully choosing both words and tone for the most guilt he could possibly inflict. "I wouldn't call that an issue."

"I don't want to have to hurt you," Naruto said, and Sasuke started laughing. He couldn't help it.

"You? You could barely hurt me when you had the Nine Tails inside you," he hissed, pitching his voice so that only Naruto could hear it. "The other you tried so hard to bring me home, but the only reason he's alive right now is because I didn't feel like killing him. You? You're nowhere near his level."

Naruto looked worried now, not as terrified as he clearly should be. Sasuke growled low in his throat and started to run around him. His foot slammed back onto the ground before he'd gone half a step and he stood completely paralyzed.

"What?" he said, taken completely by surprise. Nara Shikamaru was standing in front of him, hands in his pockets and shadow entangled with Sasuke's.

_Shadow Imitation Technique,_ his internal voice pointed out, which Sasuke did not need to hear. He knew what it was. _You really should have seen this coming._

"You can't hold me with this," he said, and flexed his chakra against it. Shikamaru held on, doggedly and tenaciously, sweat beading his hairline. "Not for long."

"I can hold you long enough," he said, the strain evident in his voice, and Sasuke felt a prick against the side of his neck.

"Poison?" He laughed again. "You can't hurt me with poison."

"You're immune to most poisons and toxins," Shikamaru said, and somehow he was managing to sound bored even with the strain rendering his breathing ragged. Sasuke pushed harder, but his control was starting to slip away.

"What did you do to me?" he demanded. His tongue felt thick and his chakra was slipping through his fingers, returning to quiescence inside of his skin and totally outside his control.

"Surely you didn't think we wouldn't test you for poison resistance," Shikamaru said, sounding as though he were standing much farther away than a few yards. Sasuke blinked, trying to resolve the blurred and doubled image into something that made sense. "We're not idiots, Sasuke, no matter what you seem to think."

"Lord Hokage!" Sai said, somehow combining distressed and reproachful and worried all into one.

The Shadow Imitation Technique released its hold on Sasuke and he pitched forward, unable to maintain his balance. Someone caught him and eased him down, and Sasuke ended up with his head resting on Sai's shoulder as Sai knelt on the ground. He had a clear view of the ugly bruises starting to show around Sai's neck; everything else was starting to blur together.

"Sai, let him go," Naruto said. Sasuke tried to agree with the sentiment, but he couldn't speak.

"He didn't do this to me," Sai said, arm tight around Sasuke's shoulders. "There was something else out here."

"We can't be –" Naruto started.

"If you don't trust him, then trust me." Sai paused for a moment, and no one else spoke. "I see," Sai said dispassionately. "You don't trust me."

"It's not that we don't trust you," Naruto said, after what sounded like a brief scuffle and several sets of footsteps retreating.

"But you don't trust me," Sai said flatly. "I see."

"You might not be rational about Sasuke," Naruto said, and Sasuke felt his lips twitch in what would have been a smile had he been both able to move freely and unobserved. He could have told Naruto that was exactly the wrong way to go about persuading Sai.

"I'm perfectly rational," Sai said, and really, Sasuke wanted to laugh. Sai lifted him and stood in one smooth motion, and Sasuke felt one arm slip free to dangle limply. It bothered him more than it should have.

"Look," Naruto said, and Sai's grip tightened.

"Wherever he goes, I go," he said, and Sasuke felt something very odd. After a moment he identified it; a bubble of warmth had spread through his chest as Sai had spoken, and he felt protected. He shoved the feeling away as hard as he could. It wasn't right; he shouldn't be the one feeling anything but the purely physical – he was using Sai to humanize himself in the eyes of the Leaf citizens, to gain a loyal ally. Wasn't he?

"Dammit, Sai." Naruto sounded exasperated.

Sasuke shook his head internally. The argument was irrelevant. He needed to focus on burning out the toxin before the situation got worse. He retreated inside himself and focused on regaining control of his chakra. He had the threads of it and had started purifying his blood, but the process caused an involuntary twitch in the hand hanging downwards.

"He's coming around," Naruto said, and Sasuke felt another prick against his neck.

"I'm not asleep, you asshole," he growled before the drug paralyzed his vocal cords again.

"Huh," Naruto said. "Okay. Compromise. Sai, you bring him and you can stay. No one's going to hurt him. We just need to make sure he's okay."

"Acceptable," Sai said, and the rest of the trip was a blur. Sasuke felt the prick of the drug being administered at least twice more before he finally managed to isolate and neutralize it in the way he'd been taught to deal with new toxins. He wouldn't fall prey to that particular compound again.

Immunity to the drug in question didn't help when he was already safely tucked inside chakra-draining restraints; Sasuke woke to yet another unfamiliar ceiling in a building he couldn't quite place.

"Sasuke." Sai leaned into his field of vision, the bruises ringing his neck an ugly black and purple against his pale skin.

"You saw it," Sasuke said. It was very important that someone else had seen the thing they'd been fighting; he had a sudden appreciation for what Sai must have felt after seeing this thing the first time.

"I did," Sai said.

"Did it absorb your chakra too?"

Sai blinked at him. "It absorbed your chakra?"

"From the blade I threw at it; it should have blown it apart, but instead it just made it stronger." Sasuke tested the restraints around his wrists. They weren't tight enough; he would be able to get out of them in a matter of hours.

"It didn't absorb my chakra," Sai said. "That's not possible."

"I know what I saw." Sasuke pulled at the restraints as though resigned to their presence. "It absorbed my chakra."

"Then why did you try to kill me?" Sai's eyes were wide and liquid, staring down at him accusingly.

"I didn't! It was whatever the fuck was out there!" Sasuke shouted, before it occurred to him that Sai had been defending him before he'd been drugged and kidnapped, and Sai shouldn't be accusing him of attempted murder. "You're not Sai."

"I beg to differ," said Sai, but Sasuke narrowed his eyes. It wasn't a perfect transformation; he could see a few minor details here and there that weren't quite correct, but what the interrogator couldn't match was the chakra signature. Now that he was looking for it, he could see it perfectly clearly.

"You're not Sai," he repeated. "Release!"

He didn't need the hand seals or more chakra than the restraints allowed to dispel illusions; Sai's face and form fell away to reveal a blank mask above standard issue blacks.

"Cute," Sasuke said. The room hadn't changed, only Sai. "I didn't try to kill him."

"Then why was your equipment around his neck?" asked the mask. The voice still sounded like Sai, but not the inflections.

"I don't know."

"You're telling the truth," the mask said, sounding surprised.

"What reason would I possibly have to lie?" Sasuke snapped. The silence from the mask was almost eloquent. "Okay, fine. What possible advantage could I gain, right here, and right now, by lying?"

"Wait here," said the mask, as if Sasuke could do anything else, and vanished.

"What, do you think I'm broken or just untrustworthy?" Sasuke shouted after it.

Using Sai as an illusion wasn't even close to the end of the process; Sasuke almost would have preferred being just tossed in a cell. At least at that point, he would have been perfectly justified in breaking free and breaking contract. Instead, he tried to hang onto his slowly disappearing patience.

"I told you, I have no memory of that." Sasuke repeated the phrase more times than he cared to count during the extensive medical examination and the T&I-led interrogation that followed the illusion of Sai. The reigning theories were that he had snapped and intentionally attempted to murder both Kakashi and Sai while blaming it on some kind of ghost, and that he had snapped and _unintentionally_ attempted to murder both Kakashi and Sai while blaming it on some kind of ghost. Both theories were completely ridiculous, as he pointed out more than once.

Sasuke was beginning to think that the Leaf didn't deserve the patience he was giving it; it would be easier to just steal the Third's notes and leave the Leaf altogether. He was fairly sure there had to be a way for him to open the gate back home without relying on anyone else, and certainly without relying on people who seemed to be convinced that he was dangerously insane.

Inexplicably, when the evaluations came up with the result that he was both sane and telling the truth, Sasuke still ended up in front of the Fifth Hokage in the company of the medic, the interrogator, and Yamanaka Inoichi.

"I don't need to be here for this," he informed the room in general.

"You're on thin ice, Sasuke," Shikamaru said, eyes narrowed. "And it's over some very deep water. Kagami, report."

The medic stood just a little straighter. "Uchiha Sasuke's chakra has never been particularly normal, Lord Hokage. However, it did not seem to indicate an imbalance of the type necessary to produce a psychotic break followed by amnesia."

"See," Sasuke did not say. Shikamaru rewarded his patient silence by asking a number of increasingly detailed questions – when had he learned so damn much about the medical techniques, anyway? – and Sasuke literally bit his tongue to keep both silent and still.

"Can I go now?" he said when the medic finally fell silent.

"The ice is getting thinner," Shikamaru said. "Fujii."

"Yes, sir." The interrogator was already standing ramrod straight, which had the fortunate side effect of emphasizing her already impressively perky chest. Sasuke wasn't standing at the right angle to enjoy the view, sadly, although he'd certainly used it as a distraction often enough during the interrogation.

"There are none of the standard indications of failure to cooperate," she was saying, and now Sasuke was feeling just a little insulted. He'd been as indignant and obnoxious as he could, taking several leaves from Naruto's book. There was clearly something roaming around with its paranormal eye on him, and he didn't want to be sitting locked up in a cell when it found him again. And yet, every time he'd pointed that out, he'd gotten the same look. It was coming to be a very familiar look; the "Are you sure this one is entirely sane" look that most jounin apparently also had more than a passing familiarity with.

"No one in Sound ever pulled this kind of shit," he muttered, not quite under his breath. Shikamaru shot him a very sharp look and ignored his actual words, proceeding instead to question the interrogator in just as much detail as he'd questioned the medic.

"I don't have time for this," Sasuke said into the first pause. He was by now fairly sure what Shikamaru was after; the Fifth hadn't trusted him from the start. In a way, he wasn't exactly wrong not to trust Sasuke; Sasuke certainly didn't have the Leaf's best interests at heart, and he would abandon them in a heartbeat if he found a better way of accomplishing his goals. It was just that he hadn't quite found that better way, and cooperation had a higher probability of success than attempting to steal documents from the Hokage's library.

The contract he'd signed with the Third spelled out enough advantages for Sasuke that he wasn't in any hurry to actually break it, even if Shikamaru didn't seem to have any faith at all in Sasuke's enlightened self-interest. What Shikamaru wanted was a chance to poke around in Sasuke's head without resistance, in order to confirm Sasuke's loyalty or lack thereof.

"That ice is melting under your feet," Shikamaru snapped. "And the water is getting deeper."

"In that case, let me inform you that I've learned how to swim," Sasuke snapped back. "Either let him –" he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Inoichi "- into my head, or stop blocking the door. I have better things to do than stand around while your staff repeat themselves ad nauseam." He spread his hands wide. "I'll even do you one better – let Yamanaka's daughter use my head as a training exercise under his supervision."

Shikamaru regarded him for a moment, his expression completely impassive. Sasuke hadn't spent years training his eyes for nothing, though, and Shikamaru's chakra told him that the Fifth hadn't banked on his cooperation.

"With all due respect," Inoichi said, "I'm not comfortable with sending my daughter into this man's head."

Sasuke would have smiled if he could have done it without being observed. Shikamaru leaned back in his chair. "Get Ino over here," he said to the medic, who relayed the message to someone outside the office. "She has to learn at some point," he told Inoichi. "And this is the closest she'll come to a safe environment."

Sasuke had to bite back a laugh at Shikamaru's assessment of him as a safe environment, but no one else in the room seemed to notice his suppressed twitch.

"Yes, Hokage," Inoichi said.

Traditionally, detainees were physically immobilized before a Yamanaka walked inside their heads. Sasuke argued that he wasn't technically a detainee since he was undergoing the procedure of his own free will, and all of his limbs remained unbound. It wasn't much of an advantage if things went wrong, but he was fairly sure it was enough to get him out of the building in a worst-case scenario.

"Are you ready, Ino?" Shikamaru's voice was oddly gentle, for all that he'd insisted she participate in the first place.

"Ready," she confirmed, and looked at her father. He nodded, and Ino put a hand on Sasuke's head. Inoichi put his hand on top of hers. Sasuke blinked twice, and the world fell away.

Partitioning his mind had never been particularly difficult for Sasuke; it had started when he was a child – in order to not go screamingly insane before he could become strong enough to murder his brother, he'd had to lock most of his emotions in a box. By the time he'd joined Team 7, it had become habit. By the time he'd joined Orochimaru, there had been the part of his mind that was the small child, the part of himself that had almost felt hope as a member of a standard genin team, and his true self.

Orochimaru himself had been part of that partitioning; he'd thought he was lurking in Sasuke's mind of his own free will, never realizing that Sasuke had been the one keeping him contained. It was therefore not particularly difficult to keep the Yamanaka pair on the path he wanted them to see. He left a very tenuous line of contact open to his consciousness, both to monitor their progress and to ensure that it went the way he wanted it to.

From his own experience, he knew the father-daughter pair would see the image of walking down a smooth stone corridor, and the information they were seeking would be behind a series of doors. Sasuke's monitoring of their progress was the mental equivalent of looking through tiny cracks in the walls.

"Are those the memories?" he heard Ino ask, her mental voice wavering as though the sound were coming through water. The first door opened easily, the handle turning under her tentative grip without resistance.

"They're close to the surface," Inoichi replied, his tone shading into the affirmative. He didn't sound as distorted as Ino did. "That's a good sign," he added. "For him, anyway. It means he's not trying to hide anything."

Sasuke deliberately kept his mental defenses relaxed around those particular sets of memories, but left some resistance around the reason he and Sai had been in the Hatake residence to begin with. Ino would come across a locked door within that first room.

"It's harder to get in here," she said, mental fingers roaming over the false barrier.

"Here, let me show you," Inoichi told her, and Sasuke felt an entirely different sort of mental touch. He observed the technique, memorized it, and let the defenses crumble slowly enough to feign reluctance. The barrier crumbling took the form of locks at the top and bottom of the door fading as the door swung inwards.

"Oh," Ino said after a moment, and Sasuke was fairly sure she would have been blushing if she'd had a physical form to do it with. "Does he know we're – can he tell – will he know we saw that?" she asked, and the door was closed again.

"He should have little to no memory of the procedure," Inoichi assured her, and Sasuke felt a moment of contempt for the man's sloppiness.

_He should be able to hear you listening,_ said Sasuke's internal voice, echoing and reverberating in a crashing wave of mental noise.

"Stop it," Sasuke said, alarmed. He hadn't anticipated that his occasional conversational partner would show up, and if the Yamanakas heard it, it could ruin everything. "Stop talking!"

"What was that?" Ino asked, hard on the heels of Sasuke's reply.

"He's a little more awake than I thought he would be," Inoichi said. "It's all right, Sasuke. Don't worry." He sounded soothing, and the touch of his mental fingers switched from a searching to a calming pattern.

Sasuke felt a wave of relief that while Inoichi had heard him, he'd attributed Sasuke's words to his own intrusion. He hadn't heard the Orochimaru-like voice at all. Sasuke let him feel the edge of that relief, and Inoichi explained to his daughter how to do the technique he'd just performed.

"I see," Ino said. "Then are we done?"

"Not quite."

Sasuke would have grinned, if he'd had a mouth. Shikamaru had instructed Inoichi to search for signs of treason or untrustworthiness, then. Well, let him. Sasuke had nothing to hide in that particular regard. In due course, Inoichi kept going down the hallway, opening each of the doors he came across. Sasuke left most of them more or less open, keeping what he wanted left unseen hidden behind trapdoors in the metaphorical ceiling or floor, and Inoichi missed them every time.

"Are we looking for something specific?" Ino asked, and Inoichi shook his head.

"The Fifth wants to make sure he can be trusted," he said. Sasuke rearranged his memories just enough to let the contract slip a little closer to the forefront of his mind, and put it behind a locked door. Inoichi worked the lock open and watched the memory unfold.

"That's a little cold of him," Ino said, apparently responding to Sasuke's evaluation of the contract as favorable to him and therefore worth honoring.

"Can you blame him?" Inoichi said. "He's more or less alone here."

"I guess," Ino said. "I suppose he's not likely to go running off to Tobi, though."

"No," Inoichi agreed. "Okay, on the way out…" Sasuke only paid the slightest attention to Inoichi's explanation of how to extract themselves while leaving nothing behind, and made sure no lingering traps had been laid in his mind. He was fairly sure his assessment of Inoichi was correct, but it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for the man to be pretending ineptitude in order to leave something behind undetected.

Once he'd ensured that his mental landscape was free of potential mines, and once he was sure Inoichi and Ino were completely gone, Sasuke let himself return to his body. He opened his eyes against the lingering disorientation to see Shikamaru staring down at him. The Yamanaka pair was gone and the lack of light coming through the high windows meant it was later than he'd planned on it being.

"Uh," he said.

"Passing this particular evaluation doesn't mean I trust you," Shikamaru said bluntly.

"Of course not," Sasuke returned. "You should at least trust that I won't do anything against my own best interests, though."

"Which apparently coincide with the Leaf's for now," Shikamaru said. Sasuke heard all he didn't say as well, and just nodded in response.

"You're free to go," Shikamaru said. "Given the extremely low probability of your ghost actually existing, I would recommend you endeavor to find the source of your likely mistaken belief."

"You know that Sai saw it first, right?" Sasuke couldn't help asking.

"Would you just try to stay out of trouble," Shikamaru said acerbically, and Sasuke gave him the first honest smile he'd shown anyone in days.

"I always try to stay out of trouble," he said, blatantly lying, and Shikamaru laughed humorlessly.

"Keep your trouble outside the walls, then," he said. "And that's not permission to try to burn the forest down again."

"I wasn't trying to set the entire forest on fire," Sasuke said with some indignation. "I do have some control over my own techniques, thank you very much."

"Oh, just go away." Shikamaru opened the door. "And don't make more work for me."

Sasuke walked out of the room, projecting an aura of This Was All My Idea as hard as he could, and retrieved his weapons from the outer hall; the emergency response team had apparently combed the woods for stray pointy objects, and all of his gear had been collected. He could practically feel Shikamaru rolling his eyes behind Sasuke's back as he strapped it on, but that was irrelevant. Sasuke strolled down the hallway and out the door, slowly, letting Shikamaru walk behind him most of the way.

"Sasuke," Shikamaru called when he reached the hallway leading up to his office.

"What," Sasuke said. It wasn't a question.

"I mean it. Stay out of trouble."

"Show me some trouble you want caused, and I'll cause less that makes your life more difficult," Sasuke said.

"If you can actually find your mythical ghost, I'll pay you for an A Rank," Shikamaru offered. Sasuke was fairly sure that was a sarcastic comment. He turned to face Shikamaru, grinning like a shark.

"Done." Sasuke ducked out the nearest door before Shikamaru could take the statement back.

"Oh, fuck me," Shikamaru muttered from down the hall as the door swung shut.

Finding the ghost proved to be harder than Sasuke would have thought; it had just shown up twice, but waiting for it proved to be both fruitless and frustrating and Sasuke gave up on such a passive method after perhaps an hour of wandering around outside the walls with nothing to show for it. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and it was bitterly cold for April; Sasuke could see his breath as he stalked through the darkening forest.

More eyes might be the answer, he thought, but there was no one human he would particularly trust enough to enlist in searching for the ghost, not to mention the effort that would go into manipulating nearly anyone into agreement wasn't quite worth the low probability of payoff. Sasuke glanced around to ensure that the walls were out of sight, sliced open his palm, and tried something he wasn't sure was going to work.

"Summoning technique!" he whispered, feeding his chakra into the proper patterns. The contract he'd signed with the hawk wasn't in this world, and it was entirely possible that the summons wouldn't be answered.

White smoke swirled upwards, blinding him for the briefest of moments. When it cleared, a small hawk with distinctive markings on its beak blinked up at him.

"Well," Sasuke said. His summon could be reached after all, and the implications were the closest thing he'd had to hope in months.

"What do you want?" the hawk asked irritably, fluffing its wings and shifting from foot to foot.

"Take me with you when you return," Sasuke said. It wasn't what he had intended to say, but once he'd said it, he wasn't willing to take it back. The words had taken on a life of their own, digging into his chest and he wanted to go home so badly that it forced the feeling away, keeping his breathing steady and his heart rate even through sheer will.

"What? No." The hawk glared at him and preened its chest feathers. "If you don't have a job for me, I'm leaving."

"You realize this isn't where I'm supposed to be," Sasuke said.

"What's your point?" The hawk glared harder, stopping its preening and shifting its weight in preparation for flight. "You're not coming back with me."

"I can get home from there." Sasuke dropped to his knees in front of the hawk, voice breaking, the homesickness he'd held off for so long breaking over him in a wave.

"I can't." The hawk turned its head to fix its other eye on him. "I'm going now," it added.

"You can't-" Sasuke started.

"I can, and I will." The hawk vanished.

"Fuck!" The hawk wasn't physically incapable of bringing Sasuke back to where it came from; he'd seen others join their summons. Either it had arbitrarily decided to be an asshole, or it had been instructed. Sasuke reopened the cut on his palm and performed the summon again.

"Why?" he asked bluntly when the smoke cleared.

"Why what?" returned the hawk. It was not the same hawk. Sasuke cursed.

"Why are you refusing to take me with you?" he said, enunciating each word slowly and carefully through the lead weight in his chest.

"I didn't," said the second hawk. Sasuke was all but sure it was actually laughing at him.

"Then take me with you," he said.

"No," said the second hawk. Sasuke did not strangle it, although the temptation was almost overwhelming.

"Why not?" he asked with far more patience than he felt.

"Do you have something else for me to do?" the hawk asked.

Sasuke stared at it. "No," he said, and the hawk vanished. The next five summons went in much the same manner, with Sasuke's temper growing shorter each time, but no matter what he threatened or bribed them with, each hawk refused.

"It's not part of your contract," said the smallest one he'd summoned yet.

"Then give me the damn contract and I'll put it in there," Sasuke growled. To come so close to being able to finally go home and have it denied was maddening.

"Not from here you won't," said the hawk. "Did you have another job for me or what?"

"Find a goddamn ghost." Sasuke forced his fists to relax, forced his heart rate down, and ran through a calming technique. If he gave the hawk a task, it was possible that he could latch onto it when it left, whether it wanted him to or not. "Its chakra is cold, and I can't feel it. It absorbed my chakra the last time I saw it, which –"

"If you couldn't feel the chakra, then it's yours," the hawk interrupted.

"It wasn't me!" Sasuke snapped.

"No, it was your chakra," the hawk said patiently. "You're not from around here, but there is a you who was born here. Go find him."

"He's dead," Sasuke said shortly. "He's been dead for… years…" The implications of what he was saying suddenly hit him through the homesickness.

"You did say ghost," said the tiny hawk, and vanished.

"Fuck," Sasuke said, frozen for a brief moment. Reality reasserted itself; no matter how much he wanted his summon to solve his problem, it wasn't going to do it. That particular problem could be solved later, now that he had a lead on it. More immediately, he knew what the ghost was.

Sasuke took off for the walls. The gray of false dawn was just lightening the horizon when he made his way through the gates; he hadn't realized how late it had gotten. He decided he didn't give a flying fuck what the hour was; the Uchiha clan had done something terribly horribly wrong with the body of his alternate self, and he was damn well going to find out what exactly it was.

The Uchiha clan gates were guarded. Sasuke didn't care; he intended to go straight past them and demand answers from Yashiro or Shisui or whoever he could get to talk first. He was twenty feet away and closing when someone tackled him from behind.

"What, exactly, do you think you're doing?" asked a soft voice from a surprisingly hard to escape weight on top of his back.

"Get off me, Hayate," Sasuke snarled. "I want answers from the Uchiha."

"That doesn't exactly answer the question," Hayate said, still calm and still holding Sasuke down. Sasuke struggled futilely, growing more and more annoyed. Hayate simply shouldn't have been strong enough to pin him down, and yet here he was, face in the dirt.

"The Fifth told me to hunt down my mythical ghost," he spat. "That's what I'm doing."

"You spent the day in the woods summoning hawks," Hayate said. "And then stormed off toward _them_."

"Were you _watching_ me?" Sasuke finally managed to get enough leverage to throw Hayate off. The other man bounced off the nearest wall with the bottoms of his feet and came up between Sasuke and the Uchiha clan gates.

"Yes, I was watching you," Hayate said. "Of course someone had to be watching you."

"You can't stop me from going in there." Sasuke pointed at the gates. "They have answers and I want them."

"I'm not trying to stop you from going in at all," Hayate said, holding his hands up in defense or placation or just to be aggravating, Sasuke couldn't tell. "I'm trying to stop you from going in, right now, without thinking about what you're doing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing," Sasuke growled. Hayate wasn't strong or quick enough to stop him if he made the right move, and Sasuke was fairly sure he would have the other man off guard enough in just a few seconds.

"You can't just go in there, hurling accusations –" Hayate started, and Sasuke lost any semblance of calm he'd managed to hang on to through the frustrations and pure fury of the past few hours. Before he could stop himself, they were both shouting at each other in the middle of the street.

"Hey, what's going on?"

The voice belonged to Namikaze Naruto, who was jogging up behind Sasuke and loud enough to both wake the dead and cut through the argument. Sasuke turned, trying to keep Hayate in his field of vision and incorporate Naruto into his plan of assault, but Hayate took advantage of Sasuke's lack of attention and had him pinned to the wall by the time Naruto reached them.

"We seem to have reached an impasse," Hayate said.

"Yeah, that doesn't help. What the hell are you two doing and why did you call me here?" Naruto looked like he'd just rolled out of bed and thrown on whatever clothes were the closest, which was probably the case; his mesh shirt was on backwards under the green jacket that clashed so horribly with his bright orange pants.

"Do I have to explain this all over again?" Sasuke glared at Hayate.

Hayate gave a garbled explanation without letting up on Sasuke's throat, and Sasuke gathered enough chakra to shove him away.

"No, shut up, stop. Just stop." Both Hayate and Naruto gave him the same faintly offended look. "I am going to explain this very slowly. So that you both understand. And then you are going to get the fuck out of my way."

"Yes, I believe we would all like an explanation."

Sasuke had felt Shisui's chakra approaching, and didn't jump when the blind Uchiha materialized out of the lightening twilight behind Naruto. Naruto, on the other hand, tried to climb the wall. "The hell!" he said, breathing rapidly. "Don't sneak up on a guy like that!"

"You're a _ninja_," Sasuke told him. "No one's supposed to sneak up on you. Dead-last," he added, more out of a sense of nostalgia than anything else.

"There you go with that weird nickname again," Naruto said.

"An explanation," Shisui interrupted. "For why you're all screaming outside our walls well before dawn."

Sasuke folded his arms and explained, in small words, and simple sentences. It made no difference. The three of them still looked at him as if he were possibly completely insane.

"I want to see the body," Sasuke said, voice low and dangerous. He was at the end of his patience, and beginning to not care about potential consequences. "Right. Now."

"You can't just –" Shisui started, and the air next to him shimmered. Sasuke activated the Sharingan just in time to see the same concentration of chakra that had attacked him in the woods reaching for Shisui.

"Get down!" Sasuke shouted, and dove to knock Shisui out of the way. The other man was already moving, and Sasuke used his momentum to send them both rolling into the center of the street. The ghost splintered the wall beside where Shisui had been standing, and everyone took up a defensive stance.

"I can't see anything," Hayate said, still sounding remarkably calm.

"I can feel it," Shisui said, facing exactly where Sasuke could see the chakra concentration.

"Fire," Sasuke told him. "Fire disperses it."

"We can't risk that here," Shisui said. "The entire sector would go up in flames. We need salt and iron."

"You know what this is!" Sasuke shouted, furious that the Uchihas had been stringing him along and forgetting that they hadn't been involved in his interrogation at all. The ghost took advantage of his distraction and Shisui barely pulled him out of the way in time.

"Guys, I can't see whatever that is at all!" Naruto called.

"Gekkou, please inform the Hokage that the situation is under control," Shisui said. "No further assistance is required for the Uchiha clan."

Hayate gave Shisui a brief considering look and took off at a sprint. Shisui cocked an eyebrow at Naruto.

"I'm not going anywhere," Naruto said, and palmed a blade. Chakra began to dance along its edges. "Just point me at it."

"It needs to be resealed," Shisui said. "This way. It will follow." He started toward the gate, but the ghost swooped toward him, dragging dust and pebbles in its wake. Naruto lunged forward, aiming toward the cloud he could see. The chakra-infused blade sank into the ghost and it burst apart, throwing Naruto backwards.

"Hurry," Shisui said, and Naruto was on his feet and running beside them before the second syllable passed Shisui's lips. The ghost was coalescing behind them as they made it through the open gates. It howled and swooped down on them, and Sasuke breathed fire straight up into the air. The ghost turned to smoke, whitish gray against the bruise-purple sky, and reached out something resembling a hand.

"Get the fuck off," Sasuke said, and swung his sword through the appendage. It fell off and melted away, and Sasuke kept running. Shisui led them toward exactly where Sasuke had started to suspect he would, to the record hall with the secret room underneath.

One of the Uchiha guards had followed them from the gate, and Shisui snapped out an order for evacuation, emergency code three-one-eight. The guard paled and took off faster than the naked eye could see. Sasuke didn't watch him go; he was focused on the low building in front of them. It was unlocked and open, but the ghost stood in the doorway and barred the way.

"If you have to burn it down, burn it," said Shisui.

"It's in the door?" Naruto asked, and Sasuke nodded. Naruto flung himself forward, one blade in each hand, both of them sizzling with chakra, and sliced the ghost in half. It grabbed him before it fell apart and flung him into the sky. He came down hard, chakra glowing almost brightly enough to be seen cushioning the fall. "It doesn't seem to want us to go in there," he said, but Sasuke was already pulling him inside.

The door to the hidden corridor was exactly where he'd remembered it being, but it was warped and bent. The metal had cracked down the center and the walls around the edges were darkened. A second ghost stood in front of the door, and the familiarity of its chakra hit Sasuke like a boulder to the chest. His sword fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

"Itachi," he whispered. The second ghost lunged forward and slammed him into the ground. Sasuke missed his sword by a hairsbreadth, the blade just barely brushing his fingers. Itachi's ghost on top of him was pressing the air out of his lungs and he couldn't breathe. Black spots danced in his vision. His sword was right under his hand, and Sasuke grabbed it by the blade and stabbed Itachi's ghost through the throat. "You're not going to kill me!" he shouted at it. "Not after what you did to me!"

The ghost tumbled off of him and Sasuke climbed to his feet. Blood poured down his wrist and he wondered briefly that ghosts could bleed before realizing he'd cut his palm open on the sword. All of his fingers were still responsive, though, so he ignored the blood and gripped the hilt of the sword in his left hand instead.

"Keep them busy," Shisui said urgently, and vanished. Naruto materialized behind Sasuke's back.

"I knew you were an idiot," Naruto said, and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Shut up," he said, sword held in a defensive position as both ghosts circled them.

"But I didn't think you were _this_ stupid," Naruto continued, the blades in his hands still glowing with chakra. He was nearing the end of his rope; Sasuke could tell even without the Sharingan that his chakra levels were dropping. However this fight ended, it had to happen quickly.

"No, I'm precisely this stupid," Sasuke snapped. "Just watch."

The ghost of his alternate self was right in front of him, Itachi's ghost behind it. Sasuke ran directly towards them both, swinging his sword diagonally across his double's child-sized torso. The shape loosened and melted along the cut, but it was too close to its source of power to dissolve entirely. It reached out a hand, grabbed Sasuke by the throat, and threw him against the ceiling without actually letting go. Sasuke clawed at the hand, dropping his sword, and trying desperately to breathe for the second time. The ghost pressed harder, Itachi's ghost joining it to increase the pressure on his neck. Sasuke groped at his belt for another blade.

"Hey! Asshole!" Naruto threw a kunai into the smaller ghost's groin, and it paused. Itachi's other hand slid along its back and sped toward Naruto's chest.

"Look out!" Shisui had returned. He threw a handful of coarse salt into the Itachi ghost's torso and one hand around Sasuke's throat dissolved. The pressure had eased up just enough to take a ragged breath, and he sliced through his double's arms with the smaller fell away, and gravity nearly caught up with him. He thrust chakra into the soles of his feet and stuck to the ceiling.

"Shisui, fall back!" he said, forcing his voice through the sensation of ground glass. Able to sense chakra or not, Shisui's blindness made him a liability, and both ghosts were circling him now.

"No, you don't understand," Shisui said, throwing another handful of salt. The Itachi ghost flowed around it, closing around Shisui's outstretched hand. Naruto flipped over it, slicing the appendage off with a second kunai.

"Get back," he said, with complete seriousness. "We'll handle this." The ghost of Sasuke's double knocked him through the nearest wall and followed him through the ragged hole.

"No!" Shisui said, scattering the rest of the salt and lighting a blade on fire. "I have to tell you – Fugakusu-"

Itachi's ghost grabbed Shisui's face and slammed the back of his head into the wall over and over.

"Shisui!" Sasuke shouted, and dropped to the floor. By the time he touched the ground, the back of Shisui's skull was bright red, blood and possibly something else dripping through his hair. "Shisui!"

Itachi's ghost flowed away from Shisui's limp form, letting it fall heavily. The flaming knife slipped to the ground, lighting the woven mats. Smoke billowed into the air as the secret Uchiha records started to burn.

"Fuck!" Sasuke said. "Fuck! Naruto!"

"I'm here!" Naruto skidded into the room, the ghost of Sasuke's double hot on his heels. He was bleeding heavily from the shoulder and from the side of his head, but there was an explosive tag attached to a kunai clutched in one hand.

"Get Shisui!" Sasuke said. "I'll handle them!" The ghost of his double made a grab for his legs, and Sasuke vaulted over it. Itachi's ghost made its own grab, but the two of them weren't working together, and that made Sasuke's fight much easier. He ducked under Itachi's ghost and grabbed the blade Naruto tossed. Naruto dove for Shisui once the blade had cleared his fingers, graceful despite his clear vertigo.

Sasuke caught the knife and flung it down the vent. "Go, go, go!"

For the second time in less than a month, Sasuke was nearly caught up in the edge of his own explosion, but this time he'd calculated it better. He snatched up his short sword as he tumbled through the door, hot and heavy air just barely brushing his heels as he stumbled clear. He sent a fireball into the ruins of the building for good measure and then watched it burn while Naruto dragged Shisui to presumable ghost reappeared from the flames, and Sasuke hoped that he'd managed to temporarily contain them rather than set them utterly and completely free. The necklace with the Uchiha crest burned cold against his skin and it stung the cut across his palm as he ripped it off. The silver chain glinted in the rising sun and he flung it into the smoldering embers.

"Naruto, get Shisui medical assistance," he said. Naruto didn't even hesitate; he scooped Shisui over his shoulders in a modified fireman's carry and raced towards the town. The flames rose higher and footsteps crunched in the unseasonable frost behind Sasuke.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Yashiro stalked toward him, wearing formal clothes with the Uchiha crest prominently displayed. He cut an impressive figure, half-illuminated by the dying flames, half-lit by the still-pale sunlight. Sasuke didn't care.

"What the hell did you people think you were doing?" he shot back, because he'd recognized the chakra this time. He'd felt both of them. _Third time's the charm_, said his internal voice. "I know what that was."

Yashiro froze. Being an Uchiha, he managed to make that look frightening as well. Sasuke was still unimpressed. "What do you mean?" Yashiro said carefully.

"I know _who_ that was," Sasuke said. "Do you really want to have this conversation right here? Because I think there are a number of people who need to hear what I'm about to say. And a lot more who really don't."

"The number of people who do not need to be privy to this conversation is indeed high," Yashiro said.

Sasuke gave him a look to indicate that he knew very well that the number of people Yashiro thought needed to know about the dirty little Uchiha secret was much, much smaller than the number of people Sasuke intended to tell.

"Show me where Fugaku's remains are," he said instead, and in the end Yashiro capitulated.

It took the rest of the morning to get Sasuke's list of people into the Hokage's office; by that time, he had acquired a small piece of Fugaku's remains and written the necessary scroll and tags. The papers were spread out over the Hokage's desk, drying.

"Okay, what the hell is going on here?" The Fifth Hokage slouched into the room, rubbing his eyes and looking for all the world like a sulky teenager. Which, technically, Sasuke supposed he was.

"Lord Hokage," he said by way of greeting.

"What the fuck did you put on my –" Shikamaru started, and then actually read the scroll. "Explain to me, right now, what you think you're doing with this kind of technique," he said, voice low and dangerous. Asuma, standing just behind his right shoulder, shifted his weight in such a way as to convey a very overt threat.

"Hear me out," Sasuke said to Shikamaru, and looked at each of the occupants of the room in turn.

Yashiro stood by the window, every line of his body proclaiming that he was there for reasons of his own and that he was indulging all of them by gracing them with his presence. Closest to him was an ANBU member, mask on, to whom Sasuke had been introduced as Tenzou; he thought it was the same person that had borne the same name in his world. Shizune and Ibiki were both standing more or less at attention a little farther away, although in Shizune's case Sasuke was sure it was to rein in her irritation. Mitarashi Anko was lounging against the wall, cleaning under her nails with some kind of sharp object, the cursed seal on her neck standing out in sharp relief against her skin. Shimura Danzou, who had arrived just barely ahead of Shikamaru and Asuma, stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

"I would like to show you an Uchiha secret," Sasuke said, getting the instant attention of every occupant of the room. "In order to do so, I require someone whom you wish to be very dead."

"You want _what_," Shikamaru breathed out. "Damn, I knew you'd be more trouble." He gave Sasuke a calculating look. "You have fifteen seconds to convince me that you're not some kind of lunatic with a grudge," he said finally.

"Bring me someone you want dead, and I'll prove it," Sasuke said back. "Otherwise I can't control the two of them." He couldn't control the two ghosts anyway, but the fact that they hadn't shown up yet boded well. He was fairly sure he could get through the ritual before they worked their way loose from the wreckage of the Uchiha record hall.

"The two of _who_?" Danzou interrupted, but Shikamaru shook his head.

"We don't execute ninja," he said. "International law."

"It doesn't have to be a ninja. But I need someone living to become a vessel for the dead." Sasuke stood with his spine straight and his eyes fixed on Shikamaru's.

Shikamaru blinked. Twice. "I cannot and will not sacrifice someone innocent," he said finally.

"Then get me someone guilty, because the seals are weakening," Sasuke said, without taking his eyes from Shikamaru. It helped that he was fairly sure he was telling the truth.

"You couldn't have dropped this little problem in the Third's lap, could you," Shikamaru said. "You had to give it to me." He glanced over at Shizune. "Does it have to be a healthy body?" he asked.

"No," Sasuke said. "Just someone living."

"Shizune," Shikamaru said. "Prepare Uchiha Shisui."

"You can't –" Yashiro said, and Shikamaru slammed his hand down on the desk hard enough to crack the wood.

"Yes, Lord Hokage," Shizune said, and rapidly left the room.

"If your clan did what I think it did, then you all have a lot to answer for," Shikamaru said to Yashiro, voice hard enough to cut through iron. "Shisui is dying already. Count yourselves lucky that this is the only price you'll have to pay."

Sasuke collected the scroll and the tags. "This will be easier if we go to the body," he said.

"No. We do this here." Shikamaru started pulling the heavy shutters over the window closed. The small group of people – minus Yashiro – had gathered on one side of the room by the time Shizune returned, pushing Shisui on a stretcher. He lay on his side, the back of his head heavily bandaged, breathing irregularly.

"Shut the door behind you." Shizune left the stretcher in the center of the room and latched the door closed before joining everyone else.

"You're sure he won't –" Shikamaru said, and Shizune shook her head quickly.

"No, his chakra pathways are so degraded that I'm surprised he's still breathing," she said. "It's only a matter of… of time."

"You may proceed," Shikamaru said. Sasuke placed Fugaku's remains into the proper position and reopened the slice on his hand.

"This is a form of summoning," he said, and slammed his bloody palm down onto the scroll. "It pulls the soul from the pure land of the dead to the impure world of the living, and turns the living into a vessel for the dead."

Shisui's form flickered, submerged under rushing lines, and when the air around him cleared it was no longer Shisui's body on the bed. Uchiha Fugaku sat up, staring around the room.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded imperiously.

"Hello, Father," Sasuke said, and Fugaku paled. "Now be quiet." Fugaku's mouth snapped shut, although his eyes glared furiously.

"This tag allows the summoner to control the summoned," Sasuke said, holding it up. "The summoned retains all of the abilities and powers it had during life, it cannot die, and it cannot run out of chakra." He smiled humorlessly and directed his next words at Anko and Tenzou. "Orochimaru described this as the perfect technique. It can only be released by the will of the summoner; in other words, if I die, the technique continues."

"Who did you summon?" Shikamaru asked Fugaku, and Sasuke could _see_ sickened comprehension dawning on the faces of every ninja in the room with the exception of the ANBU, although Tenzou shifted his weight away from both Yashiro and Fugaku. No one really needed to hear the answer to know it at that point, but the room needed the demonstration of exactly how the impure world resurrection worked, and to hear how badly Fugaku had failed.

"You may answer," Sasuke resisted, bloodless and broken skin tightening around his dead black eyes. Sasuke bent his considerable will onto the seals controlling the undead summon and felt Fugaku's mental strength crumble.

"My sons," Fugaku said unwillingly. "I summoned the souls of my sons."

"It didn't go quite right, did it," Sasuke said softly. "You may explain," he added.

The look Fugaku gave him, full of hate, promised retribution. It wasn't that unfamiliar an expression on his father's face. "I could neither properly control them nor release the technique," Fugaku said finally. "I thought my death would give them peace."

"Instead you condemned them to a living death, sealed underground," Sasuke said. "The seals are weakening, and they're both struggling to get out. Hell, they're halfway there already. They're angry, insane, and they'll never ever stop. Do you understand? They will _never stop_."

Fugaku drew himself up and remained mute, the hate in his eyes growing.

"This is the sequence to release them." Sasuke demonstrated. "You're going to set them free."

Fugaku's resistance lasted bare seconds before he brought up his hands to perform the sequence of seals.

"Not here," Sasuke said. "At the site." Technically, Fugaku could release the ghosts from anywhere; Sasuke didn't feel that was enough of a demonstration.

"Are you sure you want him to walk through the streets in the middle of the day?" Shikamaru said mildly.

"Oh. Right." Sasuke eyed his summon. Fugaku had presumably been well-known here, too, and was known to be dead. Having him marching around with his face uncovered would attract all the wrong sorts of attention.

"Tenzou," said Shikamaru, and the ANBU in question stiffened into attention. "Training mask."

"Yes, sir," said Tenzou, and vanished to reappear moments later with an ANBU uniforms and a white unmarked mask.

"Dress," Sasuke said, and most of the people in the room turned their backs to give the summon a semblance of privacy. It did nothing to quell the resentment in Fugaku's face. Sasuke debated telling him that he'd brought his situation upon himself, but it wouldn't do any good. He knew his father too well.

The site of the former Uchiha record hall was still smoldering when Sasuke reached it, followed only by his summon, Yashiro, and Shikamaru. The wreckage sent wisps of white smoke up into the unseasonable cold air of the late April afternoon, and the pendant he'd thrown into the fire glinted in the sunlight, miraculously uncharred. Sasuke, now that he knew what he was looking for, could feel the ghosts' chakra thick in the air; his own and Itachi's, warped and frigid and sliding along the back of his tongue like oil. As he approached, the ground rumbled, sending stray embers sliding toward the dry grass.

Sasuke stood over the smoking wreck, reaching into his sense of the dramatic and letting the breeze ruffle his clothing. Fugaku stood behind him, one pace to his right. "Now," he said softly.

Fugaku stepped forward. His hands flashed twice, once for each of the failed summons, and Sasuke could feel the oily chakra leaking out of the air. Only a few minutes passed before the atmosphere was clear, and even the remnants of the fire petered out. The pendant crumbled into dust before Sasuke's eyes. Fugaku returned to his place behind Sasuke.

"It seems to work," Shikamaru said, eying the summon standing meekly with his hands loosely at his sides.

"Of course it works," Sasuke said, although he hadn't been entirely sure that the dismissal sequence would actually dismiss the failed summons; Fugaku had done a poor enough job of summoning and controlling his sons that it had been possible that dismissing them would fail as well. From the expression on Shikamaru's face, he'd read Sasuke's doubts and was simply choosing to ignore them at the moment. "The Sharingan always works."

"Hn." Shikamaru snorted. "Of course it does."

"This technique cannot be performed without the Sharingan," Sasuke added. Shikamaru cocked an eyebrow. "You're welcome to try it yourself."

"How many can you summon?" Shikamaru asked, voice too low for any of the currently lurking Uchiha clan members to eavesdrop, even with their enhanced hearing.

Sasuke blinked. "I have no idea," he answered honestly. "It doesn't take my chakra to maintain it at all."

"It requires living bodies," Shikamaru said, even more quietly. "To act as a vessel for the dead."

"Yes."

Shikamaru nodded. "Any living body?"

"I don't understand."

"Does it require a soul to exchange, or can it be done with a clone?" Shikamaru asked, carefully enunciating every word.

"A clone?" A sudden mental image of rows and rows of white-skinned clones with sharp teeth struck Sasuke. "You mean the Zetsu clones. The ones acting as patrols."

"What else could I possibly mean?" Shikamaru smiled humorlessly.

"I have no idea." Sasuke glanced over his shoulder at Fugaku. "I won't know until I try."

"You will try nothing without my express permission," Shikamaru said, voice dropping the temperature around them to a sub-zero chill. "You will have it do nothing without my express permission."

"Yes, sir," Sasuke said, inflecting his words with barely a touch of sarcasm.

"Take it somewhere. Keep it out of my sight. Keep it under control." Shikamaru flicked his fingers at the undead summon and stalked off. "Yashiro. A word."

Sasuke glanced at Yashiro; the man followed the Fifth without even the slightest hint of trepidation in his body language. "Come," he said to Fugaku, and the mask-wearing summon fell into step behind him exactly as a blatant ANBU bodyguard would.

Sai was in Naruto's kitchen when Sasuke walked in the door, tired from the sleepless night, the invasion of his skull, the fight with the ghosts, everything. Bruises ringed his throat, dark against his too-pale skin, and Sasuke suppressed an urge to throw the undead Fugaku through the nearest wall.

"Are you all right?" Sai asked, on his feet and looking over Sasuke before the door swung shut behind the summon. His voice was still rough, hoarse from the belt that had been around his neck.

"I'm fine," Sasuke said. "What about you?" He ran his hands lightly over Sai's shoulders and his torso, avoiding the neck, looking for any other signs of injury.

Sai smiled and shrugged. "I'll live."

"That's good." Sasuke pulled Sai into a rough hug. "What's with the guard?"

"It's nothing," Sasuke said. "I'll tell you when I can." He motioned to Fugaku. "Stay here until you hear differently from me. Without speaking."

Fugaku took up a position at attention next to the door, hands clasped behind his back. It was easier to pretend that he wasn't Sasuke's father when his face was covered and his body language muted by unwilling obedience.

"I see," Sai said slowly, and Sasuke buried his face in Sai's shoulder. "Have you slept at all?" Sai asked, and Sasuke let his lover chivvy him upstairs to his bedroom for sleep. Sai kept throwing glances over his shoulder at the silent Fugaku until he was out of sight, but he said nothing.


End file.
